We had not planned on diving during our vacation, but Diving Safaris shares a location with a friend's business, Spanish Dancer catamaran, and we kind of got sucked in by our kids. The course is normally $115, but they cut the price to $100 since we had three people. The program is simple -- about two hours of instruction including 1.5 hours in the pool -- showing us basic dive safety. Sylvia, our instructor, is very good with kids and quickly brought our daughters up to speed. The staff fit us with wetsuit and the other gear that we would need for our dives later that week.

We scheduled our dives for Friday morning at 8:30. They are located just down the beach from our resort in Playa Hermosa, so we had a quick breakfast and headed for the meeting place. Diving Safaris has three boats, one of which was used that day for another group of new divers along with some local girls. After a short boat ride to the first dive spot we donned our gear and stepped into the warm, clear water. Visibility was greater than 50 feet and we slowly made our way down, checking our buoyancy and clearing our ears. At about 20 feet, we saw a large turtle swim by, startling my 12-year-old, but exciting her at the same time. We continued down to 40 feet and saw an amazing number of fish and other aquatic life.

After about 35 minutes we surfaced and climbed back aboard the dive boat where we were greeted with cold drinks and all the fresh pineapple that we could eat. We cruised to a secluded beach for about 45 minutes where we rested and snorkeled. A short while later we cruised to our second dive location at Monkey Head. This time we were greeted with a small group of reef sharks along with a number of huge rays. There were fewer fish, but it was a great experience during our 40-minute dive.

All in all this was a great half-day and excited our children to want to take a complete PADI course on our return to the States. Everyone was highly professional: instructors (both Sylvia and Johnny), dive masters, and crew.