{"id":1204,"date":"2018-03-01T23:03:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T22:03:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.celinaschou.no\/oceanescapades\/?p=1204"},"modified":"2018-03-01T23:03:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T22:03:38","slug":"padi-certification-in-bocas-del-toro-panama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.celinaschou.no\/oceanescapades\/padi-certification-in-bocas-del-toro-panama\/","title":{"rendered":"PADI certification in Bocas del Toro, Panama"},"content":{"rendered":"

My main reason for going to Panama was to do my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. Bocas del Toro came up as one of the best places for diving, and there were several dive shops located there. I ended up doing my certification at La Buga, a fantastic dive shop with awesome instructors and a nice big dive boat.\u00a0For the certification you have to do five adventure dives. In addition to these dives I also did two fun dives with La Buga and two with a dive shop located at Bastimentos Island.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

Ready to go diving<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

One of the many huge sponges<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

So much coral<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

My first dive was a peak performance buoyancy dive where you learn more about buoyancy control. When I started diving, I really struggled with my buoyancy. It was only really when I did my dry suit course that I started to master the basics. This dive really helped me understand how to use my breath to go up or down rather than being over weighted and using air in my BCD to try to stay neutrally buoyant. After the dive I even managed to drop 2 kg of weight for my remaining dives!<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

One of the many starfish<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Sergeant majors – one of my favorite fish<\/p><\/div>\n

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\"Dive

Sand dweller chilling on the wreck<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

I then did a wreck dive to a trimaran, the Mystic Wind, which was sunk by two of the dive centers in order to create an artificial reef. Before the dive my instructor told me to watch out for the fire coral and lion fish while at the wreck, which was all I could think about as we swam under the wreck itself. The coolest thing was to swim inside the cockpit of the boat, where we ended up hanging out for a while. Afterwards we hung around the aft of the boat surrounded by so many fish, and we even passed by a massive moray eel on the way back. Being the highlight dive in the area I ended up diving the Mystic Wind in several of my dives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

The Mystic Wind<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Spider crab hiding in coral<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Wreck dive<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the navigation dive I did some navigation exercises in the shallow part of the reef before heading back to the wreck. The deep water dive was supposed to be down to 30 meters where we would practice some skills and swim around for a bit. In the end the visibility was extremely low – maybe about a meter, so we ended up hanging out in the line at 24 meters doing some skills. On the way back up to the boat we saw a moon jellyfish, which I guess was kinda the highlight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

Pretty coral<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Horrible colors, but there is a lobster hiding in there<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Pretty feather duster worms<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The last dive was by far the coolest one, and also the one we were most nervous about before the actual dive – the night dive. On the boat the dive instructor tried to calm our nerves with promises of bioluminescent plankton at the end of the dive. As soon as we got in to the water and switched the flashlights on, I realized that it was not scary at all, it was actually super peaceful, and as we were diving during an almost full moon it was not completely dark either. On the way to the wreck my friend spotted an octopus, with the help of an orange light that they cannot see we got to see this octopus swim around, feed on things and change color – it was such and incredible moment! At the wreck we swam underneath, before heading up to the cockpit. While in there I was shining my flashlight around just to see what was there when I discovered a lion fish maybe 30cm away from my head, luckily for me it was sleeping. At the end of the dive we did our safety stop seated on the sand at the bottom and switched off our flashlights. With any movement we could see all this bright blue bioluminescent plankton around us. Safe to say, it was the most amazing safety stop ever.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

Ready for the nigh dive<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

My friend the lion fish<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Conch in hiding<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Because I could not bring my camera along when I did my certification I did two more fun dives with La Buga just so that I could bring my camera and take pictures. We also did two dives with Scuba 6 on Bastimentos Island as we wanted to do some other dive sites. They have a big focus on ecofriendly diving and gave us a presentation about coral and some of the fish species before we headed out. During these dives I played around with my photography skills and went looking for different critters on my own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Dive

Stingray, sea cucumbers and starfish relaxing<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Brittle Starfish helping coral feed<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Dive

Sea anemone<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bocas del Toro is definitely a great place for scuba diving, with very friendly dive masters and cool dive sites. This combined with the awesome atmosphere made it a place I would love to go back to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My main reason for going to Panama was to do my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. Bocas del Toro came up as one of the best places for diving, and there were several dive shops located there. I ended up doing my certification at La Buga, a fantastic dive shop with awesome instructors and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-caribbean","category-central-america"],"yoast_head":"\nPADI certification in Bocas del Toro, Panama - CC's Ocean Escapades<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.celinaschou.no\/oceanescapades\/padi-certification-in-bocas-del-toro-panama\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"PADI certification in Bocas del Toro, Panama - CC's Ocean Escapades\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My main reason for going to Panama was to do my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. 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