The nice thing with Casa Marina Beach/Reef in Sosua is that it's only about 10 minutes away from the airport. You barely get enough time to settle into the bus seat when it's time to get off and check in at the resort. Before leaving for this trip, I did a bit of research on dive centers in Sosua, the major center being Northern Coast diving, a PADI shop, as well as a number of others. I've heard of Northern coast, and dove with Blue Sea when we stayed at Breezes Puerto Plata a couple of years back. It turns out that Casa Marina has it's own dive center at the far end of the beach called Aqua Center. http://www.aqua-center.com and it's also a PADI shop. The dive center has relatively new equipment (I noticed some Calypso regulators still in boxes on the shelves) the air compressor for refilling the tanks looked brand spanking new, and they had a small fresh water plunge tank to clean your equipment off after the dive. I bring my own equipment, except for weights and tank, so I can't really comment on the quality of their equipment, other than I noticed a few people suffered free flowing reg's at times, these ones did look a bit worn probably due for replacement.

Checking their prices for the PADI Advanced training they were pretty much in line with what the other shops were offering in the area, only about $50 higher than the best we found, so they offered a courtesy dive at the end of the course to make up for it. As a point of interest for anyone considering the courses down there the cost was $290 US for the entire course.
The prices I got in Canada was about $295 Canadian, + $70 for the boat, + Hotel ($50-$75 per night -3 nights required, 4 if staying for extra dives), + meals + drinks, so when you add all that up it comes out to about the same, if not better when you're at the resort (hotel, meals, drinks boat all included). Besides, I'm admittedly a "warm water wussie" so doing a deep dive in the Caribbean vs. Canada is much more desirable. :-)

First dive was to a site called Latimer1, about 50 feet. I dove with Sampio, this would be the first specialty, the Aware Fish Identification course. Latimer was a good spot for it due to the abundance of marine life. (I had wanted to do the night dive as a specialty, but they told me that they did not have any lights available, nor had I. A bit disappointing, but what can you do? I opted for the Fish ID course instead). The neat feature about diving from here is that there are a few of the dive sites that you can access via a shore dive, this and Latimer2 were a couple of them. The first order of business, once we were under the surface was that I had to do a small checkout with Sampio to assess my skills. The usual, bouancy, regulator retrieval and mask clearing. ( I hate mask clearing in salt water, had to do it many times, mainly by choice and once when it was kicked off my face in Venezuala). Once we finished that it was a nice leisurely dive/swim to the reef. Along the way, I saw my first Sea horse. It was tiny, only about 2" tall at most, but it was very cool, being the first I've seen in the wild. The reef is a mini wall, starting at about 20' and going to down to a little over 50'. The bulk of the reef is over the wall, as is the marine life. Good assortment of Angels and Butterfly fish, trunk fish, rock beauties, 3-4 speckeld morray's hiding in the reef and some flounders. Visibility was quite good, about 40' in total though there was some silt being stirred up by the increasing surf. We had our entourage of Sgt. Majors follow us for the whole dive, even up to the point of getting out of the water. A couple of them must have thought of us food and started nipping away at exposed parts. There were also a couple of scorpion fish at the base of the reef.

The next dive I was introduced to the PADI instructor Maurizio who is called in to over see the courses. He's an excellent instructor, a lot of fun to dive with, and is full of stories (2200+ dives so he's bound to have a few). The morning dive was to be the multi-level dive, he sent me out with one of the other instructors there, Gary, for this one. Again, a shore dive to Latimer2, this time a bit further out so we swam on the surface on our backs to the buoy. There's noticeable current in this area so the 300' swim winded the both of us. We caught our breath for 5 minutes and then took the descent line down. First thing we noticed that there were a few good sized jellyfish in the area, so we made a careful descent to the bottom, about 70 feet. Once down on the bottom, I looked up the descent line, and there were hundreds, of jelly fish all round, most about 7-9" across. YIKES! Gary motioned me to stay close to the bottom for the dive, and to follow him, as he'd clear a path (he told me later that the jellyfish tend to stay 4-5 feet off the bottom, so skimming the bottom usually keeps you out of their way). The dive went good from there, not as much marine life here in terms of fish, but large coral heads all over, big fan coral, almost 4' high, and beds of sponges like I've never seen before. As we made our way to the 2nd level of the multilevel dive, we were coming over a small ridge, I was looking down to check Air, depth, time, etc as I looked back up there was a jelly fish, inches from my face! I rolled to the side to try and avoid it, but I think the movement probably pulled it into the right side of my face. Fortunately it was only a momentary contact, but I did feel it stinging for about 10-15 minutes afterwards. I let Gary know what had happened, he had a quick look at the right side of my face, and gave the OK, in other words there was nothing visible there, so we continued the dive. As we got shallower the jellyfish thinned out, and when we got back to Latimer1, they were all gone. We met up with another group diving Latimer1 this time there were more Morray's visible in the reef, once was chased through the reef by a couple of large Trigger fish, pretty amusing to watch as they waited for the Morray to show his head. From there we started back towards shore, the same route that Sampio and I took coming out the other day, which was nice, as it allowed us to keep swimming into shore at 15' and do our safety stop at the same time. We took a couple of extra minutes before surfacing. Once back at the dive center, they gave me some vinegar to put over the area where I got the jellyfish sting, just to make sure nothing would develop there. The sting had dissipated within about 15 minutes of the contact, but better safe than sorry. As near as I can tell from research after the fact, they were either crystal or moon jelly fish.

An hour later, Maurizio had me join him on another shallow shore dive, where he was completing the open water session for a family, and we were going to do my navigation dive at the same time. It's a short session for the navigation, and for what the family had to do, and then we could have a nice shallow dive at the 3 Rocks site. He told them that I would be joining them to do my part of the Advanced course, and then they watched me navigate a square. I'm sure that they were scratching their heads asking themselves what the heck I was doing! LOL! 3 Rocks is a great dive site, only about 30' depth and about 50' out from shore so it's easy to get to, you can do a long dive from it and only really have to watch your air. Lots of Angel and Butterfly fish at this site, more so than at Latimer, especially Blue Angels, but the Sgt Majors came in full force when they started feeding the banana's to them. I stayed back from the crowed when they started, and it was quite the site to see. Masses of fish, with bubble streams coming up from the middle of them. LOL!

The next day it was the deep dive at Punta Goya. A wall off the furthest visible point from that area of the coast. The actual bottom on this dive was about 120 feet, though we stayed at the 100' mark. This was a boat dive, and I got a bonus with this one. Instead of putting gear on in the boat and rolling off, they taught me the technique of getting suited up in the water. Fins and mask on, and into the water (No weight belt!), then your BC/Tank are put into the water, inflate the BC if it's not already inflated and position yourself to sit on the tank, as you do this lean back into the BC and slip your arms through, then do up your straps. Voila! You're in. Ok, it took a couple of tries but it worked. Then get your regulator in your mouth, they hand you your weight belt, slip it around your waist, and roll face first into the water (that's why you need your reg) and now do the weight belt up. OK! Cool, ready now. We followed the descent line down to the top of the wall, about 50 feet, and then followed the wall down to 100 feet. The wall is an incredible mature wall, great coral, and a well established community of marine life. The angels and butterfly fish were much larger than at the shallower spots, and there were more trigger fish there, brilliant blue with huge eyes. Even the squirrelfish were larger here. Just before we descended there was a huge sea cucumber right on the edge of the wall. There were a few of the jelly fish hovering around the descent line, but nowhere near the amount that we had at Latimer2. The wall itself was home to a handful of lobsters, and Morrays.

Next day was the wreck dive. Near Punta Goya, there's an old banana freighter called La Zingara that was donated to the local Dive shops to be sunk as an artificial reef. She's sitting upright at 130' (lowest point) and about 85 feet at the roof of the wheel house. The starboard side of the ship has some gaping holes in it and looks like it's collapsed a bit, so we were warned to stay above the deck line there, but the port side is well intact. All of the holds are open as are is the wheel house, and aft room (radio room?). The aft room was FULL of various fish hiding from the onslaught of divers there (4 boats on the surface) so it was almost impossible to get into. It was literally a wall of fish. The wheel house was small, but accessible if you were careful not to get snagged on anything and offered a great view forward. Just behind the wheel house is an open area to go down into the ship, it looks like it might be either the galley or part of the engine room, however there is a lot of debris in there, and pretty dark, no one ventured down there. The ship is probably 100 feet long and there is already a good collection of coral and reef life beginning to take hold on the ship. There were some huge sponges in the forward holds 3-4 feet high. In a few years it should be a spectacular reef. Due to the depth, it was a short dive, but fun nevertheless.

That was it! The 5 dives required for the PADI advanced certification. Once back on shore, Maurizio sat with me to do the post dive review, then we went to the office to complete the certification. I got the temp certificate, and now just wait for the card to come by mail.

Later that day I went with Sampio to do the courtesy dive (4 hour surface interval for those who are counting) where he was taking out a group of first time divers from the pool session. He asked if I would help him out if required, and that he and I would be buddies, watching over the rest. Back to Latimer1, again, relaxed leisurely swim from shore where the new group had a chance to get used to the open water, and then down to the reef. They had a ball, again this group got to feed the fish banana's, and all that was visible of the divers during the frenzy was a stream of bubbles coming up from the mass of fish. LOL. I don't enjoy being in the middle of the frenzy, but it's fun to watch from a distance. What amazes me about this reef, third time diving it, there was a different variety of marine life there than the first two times. This time there was a large Jack just off the reef in the deeper water cruising around, it looked like we had disturbed him from feeding at the reef, so he was keeping out of our way until we left. The morray's came out to play again, as did the angels and butterfly fish, this time there was a lobster peering out from the reef. No jellyfish, thank you!

The crew at Aqua Center are great! Each one that I dove with was an excellent diver, very aware picking up garbage that they found on the bottom, very careful to avoid disturbing the reef, or fish at the reef. The did offer the feeding of the banana's, which is something that I don't agree with, but they have to do it to appease the masses that want to see the fish up close, and feed them from their hands. The center has good facilities, very safety conscious (buddy checks… unfortunately, don't see it all that often at resorts, but very refreshing to see here), and from a training standpoint, they went out of their way to make sure that you A) understood the course, B) that you had fun doing it. Thank you Sampio, Gary, Sue and Maurizio!

If you're going to Casa Marina, definitely dive with these guys. You'll have a blast.