Diving & Snorkeling
Buy and sell diving and snorkeling gear in Guatemala.
The nearest reef snorkelling from Guatemala is a weekend boat ride out of Puerto Barrios to the Belize cays, usually in a tour mask that may or may not seal. Scuba is learned somewhere else entirely: Lake Atitlán, a volcanic crater lake of cool fresh water with no coral in it. Your own mask and fins are the first things worth owning, and a wetsuit, regulator and dive computer follow once diving turns into a habit. Gear is listed both new and pre-owned, and you deal with the seller directly.
A mask of your own for the boat trip to the cays:
the weekend tours from Puerto Barrios out to the Belize cays hand round shared snorkel sets, and the masks left at the bottom of the box rarely seal. Hold it against your face without the strap and breathe in gently through your nose: it should stay put. Look for tempered glass marked on the lens. A clear silicone skirt feels less closed in, while a black one cuts glare and is the one underwater photographers prefer. A plain tube snorkel is fine over a calm reef, but a dry snorkel, with a float valve that shuts the top when a wave slaps over it, saves you a mouthful of sea in the chop off a cay. Full-foot fins, worn barefoot, are the snorkeller’s kind: light, short and easy to pack. Open-heel fins with neoprene booties belong to scuba and to entries over rock or broken coral. A lycra top against the sun crosses over with surfing, and dry bags with stand up paddle.
Wetsuits for Atitlán and wetsuits for the Caribbean:
scuba in Guatemala is mostly learned in Lake Atitlán, a crater lake with volcanic walls and hot springs on the bottom instead of coral, and water that stays cool all the way down. After a second dive most people want a full-length suit. Off the cays the sea is warm enough for a thin suit or a shorty, so a lake suit is too hot on the reef and a reef suit too thin up on the lake. Ask which one a listing is before you travel to see it. Fresh water also holds you up less than salt, so a diver who learned with a lake weight belt will need more lead in the sea. Neoprene loses its warmth as the cells crush with age: a suit that looks flat and feels stiff at the knees and seat has given most of it away.
Regulators, jackets and the valve on the tank:
tanks in this part of the Americas mostly take a yoke valve, the clamp-on fitting also called INT. A regulator brought over from Europe is often DIN, which screws into the valve and needs an adapter here. With a regulator, ask when it was last serviced and whether the paperwork comes with it. Look for cracked or bulging hoses where they meet the fittings and for green or white crust around the first stage. Breathe it on a full tank. It should give air without a hiss, and with the valve closed the gauge needle should not creep down. Fill a buoyancy jacket by mouth and leave it a few hours: it should still be firm. Pull every dump valve and check it reseals, look into the bladder through a valve for mould. On a dive computer, ask to see the log to see how hard it has been used. On a tank, read the test date stamped on the neck, because a dive centre looks at it before filling.
Listing a mask, a wetsuit or a full scuba kit:
say whether a mask has prescription lenses and of what strength, give fins as a shoe-size range and say full-foot or open-heel, and give a wetsuit’s thickness, size and the height it fits, with any glued repairs at the knees or seat. For a regulator, name the fitting, the last service date and whether the record goes with it; for a computer, whether the log can be shown. Rinse and dry everything before the photos, then shoot the mask skirt, the hose ends and the wetsuit zip and knees. List a snorkel set ahead of Semana Santa, when the weekend boats out of Puerto Barrios fill up. A buyer coming from Quetzaltenango for a regulator will want to breathe it before the drive home, so arrange to meet where a full tank is to hand.