Skydive Tambor Bay, Costa Rica

What a great boogie, location, organizers, skydives, friends, resort, organization, country, manifest, pilots, local boogie staff, nature, plane and much more……

For a smiling video of this event, please click here and you will find some pictures at the bottom of this article.

On Saturday morning, after a 30 hours trip from Amsterdam – Panama – San Jose (incl. a short night in San Jose) I landed  with an overloaded Cessna Caravan in Tambor, Costa Rica. The landing strip, heading directly to the Pacific Ocean surrounded by palm trees, looked surreal. This place will be our “skydive play garden” for a week. The boogie  “party at the playa” has been (just like Palau last year) organized by Rich Grimm from Tsunami Skydivers.

I feel lucky that I have joined several tropical skydive events. It’s always great to meet many skydive friends from all around the world and to jump at these very special locations. Also the World Team from BJ created a “warm” global skydive community. I think that out of the 95 skydivers (130 participants in total) in this boogie over 10 have jumped several times with the World Team. At the (pool) bar we discussed that it’s a gift to be here with passionate skydive friends from all corners of the World. (A thank you from us to BJ, as you started this many years ago :-))

Sunday morning we had an extensive safety briefing. We are (as usual) far, far away from a medical centre. If needed this can only be reached by (our skydiving) plane or a possible open seat on one of the few (Cessna caravan) airline flights. Quotes like : “you will be immediately grounded to have a week at the pool if you do not follow these obvious strict rules”, “make it your most boring canopy ride ever” and “you don’t want to be that guy” expressed the seriousness of the message of Rich.

The DZ (for safety reasons divided in two zones, one for slow and one for rapid flying canopies) is a beautiful long beach in front of our resort with palm trees as far as you can see. The manifest, swimming pools, bars, restaurants and packing area were all located directly on the beach.

Two minivans brought us for each load to the airport (500 meters from the resort) where the Cessna Caravan boogie plane (up to 18 skydivers) was waiting for us to bring us quickly to 13.000 ft. This plane, which has been specifically flown in from the US, had two long benches, on each side of the plane. This made the line up quite long and a couple of times I was still sitting to the back of the pilot seat, while the floaters jumped off. The long dives and views were incredible spectacular with the bay, beach, resort and airstrip far down below. (See one of the diving pictures I made with my chest mount)

The first days I jumped with Josh Hall (former FS4 World Champion). Josh organized great skydives and we made 14 and 16 ways with multiple points. The first day we already set a new FS record for Costa Rica with nice 2 point 17way.

The quality of the skydives was mostly really good and later in the week we broke the record again to a nice 18way with the energetic and always smiling Regan Tetlow. 🙂

I also joined a load for a “hop and pop” at 13k and you can imagine how we all loved the incredible views. Next to that I made some nice “no suite skydives”, “train exits” etc.

Each late afternoon / early evening we all were hanging in and around the pool with music, beers and cocktails. You can imagine that we all had great and smiling moments. Specifically the whale watching in the pacific right in front of the resort is a moment I will never forget. 🙂

Next to the skydives there were several organized tours and most of us have been zip lining to a nice waterfall. Including jumps from a 5 meter high rock into the water with the beautiful Costa Rica nature around. Costa Rica has a spectacular nature and it feels that you are walking in a beautifull zoo. Each day we saw many colourful large parrots, monkeys, chipmunks and many other beautiful animals.

What I really love is that each tropical skydive has a “pay it forward” action. This time we were asked to bring pencils, colour books and other gifts for a local privet school. Large boxes were easily filled and next to this we collected  4000 USD in cash among us! I was happy to see their smiling faces and to briefly explain (via a translator) some basic skydive elements.

If you also would like to escape winter I can absolutely recommend to join this tropical skydive boogie.

I like to thank Rich Grimm and his warm and friendly team! You all have created (again) an experience that I will absolutely never forget. Love you all!

Live is sooooo good!

Please see a nice video of this great event here.

 

 

7 thoughts on “Skydive Tambor Bay, Costa Rica

  1. Thank you Vern. It’s quite some work and I love to do this. Each time I learn more about aditing. 🙂

  2. Wim,
    I have watched your video so many times since we returned from Costa Rica that it shows up on my home screen as a favorite/frequent site. Thank you; it is great!

    Even allowing for the advancements in video equipment and techniques in the last 15 years, your video stands out as the most perfect capture of skydiving that I have ever watched.

    I did not jump at Richie’s boogie this year (haven’t jumped for about 4 years, last jump was at a Belize Boogie), but maybe next year. I don’t even know if you remember meeting me at the Boogie, but one thing I remember most about you was your immediate and total involvement with the kids when we brought them over to the airport , with your selfie-stick in the middle of them.

    Again, thank you for your fabulous video.
    Deb Penrod
    (Curtis Meyer’s wife)
    Pottstown, Pennsylvania, USA
    Tel 1-215-840/9943
    Email DebPenrod@comcast.net