Los Arcos de Playa San Juan

A short, comfortable swim past the marina breakwater brings you onto a shallow sandy patch, the kind of terrain that rewards a slow eye rather than fast fins. Stingrays turn up here on a good day, and seahorses sit still enough among the sand that you can swim right past one without noticing. From there, divers continuing further out reach a different site entirely: volcanic rock, swim-throughs, and an arch that gives the fuller name its plural. Large schools of bastard grunts move through this deeper section along with the same ray population working its way between zones. Two dives in one, really, joined by a single entry point.

What sets this site apart isn't the rays alone. It's pairing a genuinely easy shore option with a real reef further out, both run from the same beach. That combination, rather than any single headline feature, is what makes this site worth returning to: a relaxed first half for anyone still building confidence, and a proper reef dive for those who want to keep going.

Confirm with your operator which zone the planned dive covers before you go; the shallow sandy patch and the deeper reef are different dives with different expectations. Visibility near the beach is not guaranteed to be clear, so a calmer day improves your odds with the rays. Standard reef diving gear applies throughout, nothing specialised.