Bocas Del Toro is a very chill town, and Bocas Diving Pirates is a very chill dive shop. Chill but professional, don’t let the laid back vibe fool you, these guys are good, real good and they work hard. You don’t have to touch your gear unless you want to. The instruction quality is also excellent. I was listening to el jefe Alex instruct new divers before a DSD and everything was on point, precise, yet humorous. This is not the kind of shop where they “forget” to ask for your certification card or where the DMs dive by intuition rather than by decompression tables. Oxygen rescue kit on every dive, not something we’ve seen very often on our travels. The crew was super nice and quickly made us feel like part of the team, besides Alex, we got to know Omar, our DM Charlie and our groovin’ dancin’ boat stearin’ captain Bernardino. That’s one reason I prefer smaller dive shops, you get to make connections with people (provided you’re not a jackass to start with), and that takes the diving to a different level. You get to know the DM(s) and they get to know you and how you dive.Read more
We got to Santa Catalina, on the Pacific coast, late at night. Too late for supper or a last drink. Which was too bad because we were both bone tired and some sustenance would have been welcome. Next morning was go go go, we woke up to a great view but we had to get going pronto. The dive shop was expecting us at eight.Read more
This is much less a proper post and more a cheap excuse to show you a bunch of pictures. Also I did one of those a little while ago and some of you enjoyed it. So here are more reasons why dive, granted most of them only tangentially make any sense, but it’s one of those days.Read more
As a historian, which I guess I am, I’m a little obsessed with primary sources. As you may know, history is the study of the past (no shit Sherlock), as far as it can be glimpsed through the written word. That’s why prehistory refers broadly to the period before writing was invented, the realm of archaeology, anthropology, paleontology.Read more
You clicked because of the picture yes? I told you marketing works. Before you accuse me of any type of objectification, the long time friend in the above waters is a founding member of D&C and gave express permission for the pic’s use. So there.Read more
Scuba diving, quality cocktails, taking it easy and other treasure maps.
