Costa Brava Divers

Costa Brava Divers operates from a shopfront on the Passeig Marítim, a few steps from L'Estartit's harbour wall. The centre is part of Medaqua 13 Service, SL — the same legal entity behind the linked Hostel Costa Brava — and its commercial offer is built around stay-and-dive packages that pair full-board hotel or harbour apartment with multi-dive bookings. That accommodation-bundled positioning is unusual in the L'Estartit cluster, where most centres sell dives only.

The day-to-day schedule is a four-dive boat rotation: two dives in the Illes Medes reserve, two on the Montgrí coast. Beginner training and Discover Scuba run on Montgrí, since the reserve does not allow try dives, while certified divers move between both areas on the same boat. The team includes Dutch- and French-speaking guides described as reserve-certified instructors with marine biology backgrounds, and adaptive diving is offered. Mares is the equipment partner.

Alongside the recreational PADI ladder, the centre also runs technical diving — Trimix, Rebreather and Deep — which is rare on the Costa Brava and implies recurring booking from technical clubs rather than walk-in tourist trade. ISO 14001, the European Charter for Sustainable Tourism, and SICTED round out a credentials stack stronger than most direct neighbours.

The two public review samples sit about a third of a star apart — a much larger one well into "very good" territory, a smaller one in the "good" range. The dominant positive theme across both is crew quality. Named instructors recur — Raquel, Bruce, Carlos, Ivan, Ángeles, Robert, Julia, Geri, Enrique — and nervous first-time divers, in-water equipment problems, and group try-dives are repeatedly singled out as handled patiently and professionally. The dive sites themselves are uniformly praised; one frequently-quoted reviewer writes that the diving sites are remarkable, and that this is what saves the rating. The recurring complaint cluster sits at the shopfront and on the boat: a single toilet for groups, no shower, no changing room, equipment dried on shared racks, and reports of full boats where there is not enough space for every diver's kit. A 2025 review flagged a refund-handling dispute — a non-name-transferable voucher rather than cash after a one-tank abort — an isolated event in the larger sample but worth noting.