El Barco at Cano Island, Costa Rica is one of many dive site options at Cano Island. On this trip, we also dove the El Ancla dive site. Apart from Coco’s island (which is a whole different category of bucket list diving), Cano Island (also known as Isla del Caño) offers some of the best diving in Costa Rica – so I am told.
Dive Stats
| Dive Date | 04.11.2022 |
| Dive Number | 90 |
| Location | Cano Island, Costa Rica |
| Dive Site | El Barco |
| Temperature (min / max / average) | 26°C / 28°C / 26.7°C |
| Max Depth | 18.7m |
| Average Depth | 12.2m |
| Length | 44min |
| Gas | Air |
| Pressure (start, end, SAC) | 194.57 Bar, 77.91 Bar, 1.19 Bar/min |
| Weights | 22lbs |
| Buddy | mom! |
| Thermal Protection | Henderson Dive Skin, Henderson 3mm |
About The Dive
I was traveling in Drake Bay with my parent’s, and since my dad doesn’t dive, we only planned one dive day for the trip. The best diving in the area is out at Cano Island, which is about 45 minutes from Drake Bay by boat.
This was our first dive of the day. I originally had contacted Costa Rican Adventure Divers for this trip, but they were in the middle of moving shop locations after being closed all of October for the low season. They arranged for us to dive with Drake Divers instead. Both shops were great and I’d highly recommend diving with either of them!
Being that early November is still very much the rainy season in Costa Rica, and especially on the Osa Peninsula, the conditions weren’t the best for diving. It was cloudy with scattered showers all day and had absolutely poured the night and days beforehand. So there was a lot of river runoff and sediment in the water.
This dive site, El Barco, sometimes called El Barco Hundido, is on the north side of Cano Island, about 45 minute boat ride from Drake Bay. We saw a number of good sized schools of fish, stingrays, and white tip reef sharks. For this dive, you drop in the water and then go down on a line because there is a pretty strong current at the surface (at least this day that was the case). Once we were at the bottom, there really wasn’t much current and we could swim around the site with ease.
One thing I didn’t love was that the dive boat didn’t have a ladder to climb to get out of the water. I really have trouble getting in the boat without a ladder, and I’m heavy so I worry someone won’t be able to help me into the boat. I was able to get in this time – barely. The other thing is that they don’t use SMBs to surface, they just look to make sure there’s no boats above and surface.
I would love to return during the “summer season” when it’s sunny, has little rain, and better visibility to dive El Barco at Cano Island, Costa Rica again.
Photos of El Barco
