I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico for a day- and-a-half and wanted of course to go diving. Unfortunately San Juan is on the Northern, windward side of the island and exposed to the open Atlantic swells. Most of the diving is done on the other parts of the island. I had heard that there used to be a dive shop in the Normandie Hotel. The person at the desk said the shop was no longer there, but directed me to Manuel, a concierge at the hotel who knew what was what when it came to local diving. He pulled out all kinds of contact information books from under the counter and booked me a dive for the next morning with Sea Ventures Diving, based out of the town of Humacao. He had that morning off as well and decided to come along. The dive company van picked us up in front of the hotel at 6:30 in the morning and drove us and a couple others for about an hour to Humacao, which is on the Southern side of the Eastern Point of the island. This is the more sheltered, Caribbean side. Their boat is based in a marina in the luxury Las Palmas development. The boat ride was about 1/2 hour out into the open water. The dive sites were found by GPS and depth-sounder. The first dive was 80 feet deep and we could see the bottom when we looked over the side of he boat. The water was around 29 degrees Celsius and I was fine with shorts and a t-shirt. Visibility was around 100 feet. The bottom was a coral reef covered with sea fans, soft corals, hard corals and various sponges. There were hardly any bare patches on the reef. Sandy channels wound their way between the reef areas. There weren't as many fish here as I've seen in the tropical Pacific, but there were still enough to add some movement. I saw angelfish, small parrot fish, a barracuda, a puffer fish, a small moray, a lobster and various other small anthia-looking fish. The second dive was around 60 feet deep and was much the same as the first. I was surprised how healthy the invertebrate life on the reefs was. Puerto Rico seems to be a great place to explore. There's the diving of course, but also the incredibly historic old walled city of San Juan with it's narrow, cobblestone streets and Spanish "castles". This place was designed to burn out digital camera memory cards.
