Cocos Island - Dive Wild
Cocos Island is one of the most exclusive and remote dive locations in the world. 32 hours by boat from Costa Rica it is a hard to reach marine park, famous for being one of the sharkiest places in the world.
Simon and the Insider Divers met up in San Jose, the capital of the Central American country. Those who arrived early spent an entertaining day in the Carara National Park.
Aboard a river safari boat we cruised along the Tarcoles river and saw a wide variety of exotic birds. But the highlight surely was were the American Crocodiles that can be found sunning themselves on banks or lurking in the muddy water. In one instance the boat came within a meter of a 5m long one eyed American Crocodile “Rocky” so close we could see his teeth shining in the sun.
On a guided jungle walk we were lucky to encounter Spider and Capuchin Monkeys, poisonous frogs, huge butterflies and one of the most poisonous snakes of the Americas - a fortunately very inactive Fer-De-Lance.
The next day we set out to sea aboard the famous Undersea Hunter, one of the best dive vessels in the world. The 32 hour ride was broken up by talks by Simon about Costa Rica's nature, shark biology and shark photography. We also watched the famous “Sharkwater” movie that was shot by late Rob Stewart in Costa Rica and changed the world awareness with regards to Shark Fin trade.
When we finally arrived at the Isla de Coco it’s raw beauty hit us all immediately. Although its an urban myth that Jurassic Park was filmed here, it certainly looks the part. The first days were marked by heavy rains and low hanging clouds giving it the vibe of King Kong's Skull Island. It was in fact, for 200 years, the home base for various pirate crews and is famed to still have immense treasures buried somewhere. Check out this video with aerials of this cray island.
We were after underwater treasures - namely sharks. All dive spots around the island all feature sharks of various kinds. White Tip reef sharks are littering the dive sites - the most white tips we have ever encountered anywhere. Marbled stingrays are also extremely numerous as well as reef fish such as yellow bannerfish and angelfish. These fish are the cleaner fish that attract Scalloped Hammerheads that live in the surrounding water in giant schools.
