[su_youtube url=”http://youtu.be/tUIMNzjcazs”]December’s instructor examination was to be held in Playas del Coco. For us here at Ocean’s Unlimited that called for a road trip. Friday morning, before the I.E. was due to start, my fellow candidates and I met at the shop to catch a ride with Georgia to Playas del Coco. What was supposed to be a 3 to 4 hour dive turned into a 5½ hour dive.[/su_youtube]December’s instructor examination was to be held in Playas del Coco. For us here at Ocean’s Unlimited that called for a road trip. Friday morning, before the I.E. was due to start, my fellow candidates and I met at the shop to catch a ride with Georgia to Playas del Coco. What was supposed to be a 3 to 4 hour dive turned into a 5½ hour dive.
Within the first half hour the person who called shotgun was snoozing in the passenger seat. We stopped at Jaco to pick up some Go Pro hats and I switched seats with them. The rule, of course, was that the person riding-shotgun had to stay awake with the driver. This proved to be a challenge around the 4-hour mark when traffic came to a halt. Pushing through the sleepiness I managed to capture our entire trip on film.
The crocs
The highlight on the road was when we got out of the car to walk along a bridge to see the infamous crocodiles. Thinking I’d see 1 or 2 I was wondering what all the fuss was about. There were about 20 tourists hanging over the edge to get a better look. Turned out to be almost 30 of crocodiles laying around, basking in the sun. None of them looked smaller than 2 meters.
The further away we got from Manuel Antonio the flatter and drier the land became. We soon found ourselves amongst farmland with the mountains far on the horizon. Arriving to our hotel just before 6 PM, we dropped off our things and journeyed into town for dinner before meeting with the examiner at 8PM for orientation. Due to his flight delay we were unable to get the written exams out of the way which meant we had a long day ahead of us on Saturday. Thankfully we came fully prepared and ready to knock out all the tasks at hand.