Costa Rica Scuba Diving Adventures At Magnificent Cocos Island
Cocos Island is a national park in Costa Rica that Captain Jacque Cousteau, the famed underwater diver, once called the most beautiful island he had ever visited. Though only a few Costa Ricans have ever seen it themselves, they have named it one of Costa Rica's Seven Wonders and it is under consideration for one of the Seven Natural Wonders on Earth.
Located about 340 miles off the Pacific shore of Costa Rica, Cocos is a very small island, less than 10 square miles in area, and its fame today comes from its undersea treasure.
Unquestionably, it is one of the truly great places for scuba diving, considered by many scuba divers to be the best place on the planet for large marine animal viewing. The island frequently has so many sharks around it that it has also been called Shark Island.
There are an amazing array of species of tuna, rays, sharks and other fish, as well as sea turtles, porpoises, and whales in the waters surrounding Cocos. Hammerhead sharks are plentiful and some of the largest Hammerheads ever encountered have been seen off this island.
Cocos Island has long been famous for pirates, real and imagined. It has been claimed by some that Cocos served as inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson's famous tale Treasure Island but real pirates actually sailed to it to get away from the English fleet, to bury treasure, and to rest up for their next adventure.
In fact, to this day, two great treasures, called the Devonshire Treasure and the Lima Treasure, may still be buried there. How big is the treasure that may still be on the island? Think hundreds of millions of dollars.
This remote, shrouded in mystery, island also fired the imagination of novelist Michael Crichton whose famed Jurassic Park is set off the coast of Costa Rica.
Except for a few Costa Rica park rangers whose job it is to protect its waters from illegal fishing, the island is uninhabited. Its isolation has protected its rain forest from depredation and for centuries its spectacular underwater splendor was protected from foreign fishing fleets.
Because of its remoteness and complete lack of tourist facilities, Cocos Island is not a heavily visited Costa Rica vacation spot. The only way of getting to it is by boat. Several operators offer Costa Rica scuba diving tours to Cocos Island but plan for at least 30 hours on open water. And be sure to bring Dramamine!
If you are lucky enough to visit Cocos, you can only go onshore with previous permission of the rangers and no one is allowed to stay overnight except on their boats.
But, if you can go ashore, be sure to walk its coast because there are boulders and rocks bearing inscriptions from sailors over the centuries.
A hundred years or more before somebody first wrote "Kilroy was here", explorers wrote their names and dates of visits on Cocos Island rocks. You may even find one bearing the name of Jacque Cousteau's son.
As you walk the beaches, looking out over the great Pacific, your imagination will soar. You'll be walking the very coasts where famous pirates hid buried treasure and you will not be alone. It will almost be as if some of the stones themselves can talk. The rocks and boulders bearing the inscriptions of past whalers who left their moment of history behind, writing their names, the names of their ships and ports of call, even the dates. Sailors, long gone but not forgotten by the rocks. Like Kilroy, they were here.
And, should you have the good fortune to travel to incomparable Cocos Island, remember what Captain Cousteau said: "A lot of people attack the sea, I make love to it. "
About the write: Vic Krumm lives in sunny Costa Rica. Check out his very beautiful website Costa Rica Vacations and see why Costa Rica Tourism is world-renowned.
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