Cocos Island

Are you up to visiting one of the best scuba diving destinations in the world? Cocos Island Costa Rica is the place you have been dreaming of to encounter an underwater paradise without comparison. The only downside of Cocos Island, as in many other hidden and uncrowded paradise-like destinations in Costa Rica, is that is one of the farthest to reach. Cocos Island is located 300 miles away from Cabo Blanco Wildlife Reserve in the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. This scuba divers paradise island can only be reached by liveaboard vessel and it takes one day and half to get there. You are probably already thinking if it is really worth visiting Cocos Island, and the answer is affirmative if you love diving. After all, a World Heritage Site and one of the top ten diving destinations like Cocos Island should be worth a one and half day travel (same travel time back of course). Cocos Island has an area of 5706 acres of very rainy tropical rainforest. Due to the isolation of Cocos Island many species of animals, plants, and in a lesser amount birds can only be found here. But the main attraction of Cocos Island definitely is scuba diving.

Currently, there are only two companies that make regular trips to Cocos Island. There are Okeanos Aggressor and Undersea Hunter. Okeanos Aggressor has one liveaboard vessel with capacity for twenty passengers and offers eight day trips with five days of diving and ten day trips with seven days of diving at Cocos Island. Undersea Hunter has two liveaboard vessels, Undersea Hunter and Sea Hunter. The first of these two has capacity for fourteen passengers and the latter for eighteen passengers. Undersea Hunter offers longer trips to Cocos Island, the shorter trips are ten days with seven days of diving. There are also twelve days trips with nine days of diving.

Regarding of which company you choose to go with (checking reviews on diving chat rooms can give you an idea of what divers think about both companies) the trip to go scuba diving at Cocos Island is pricey. Meals, tanks, fins, and accommodations are included in the price but if you are in a tight budget forget about going to Cocos Island all together. You might have to do what many scuba divers with tight budgets do, either save money or book a scuba diving trip at Catalina Islands, Bat Islands, or Ocotal Beach which can offer some decent scuba diving in the Costa Rica shores. Now, I am sure you have to be wondering why take such long and pricey trip. Well, the reason is that the plethora of large pelagic underwater animals (meaning all the large underwater specimens) is certainly AMAZING. In how many places in the world can you see a school of 100 hammerhead sharks? Not that many, right? That and much more is what Cocos Island offers to scuba divers.

Scuba diving at Cocos Island can give you a chance to see some of the following: hammerhead sharks in great numbers, black tip sharks, white tip sharks, silver tip sharks, silky sharks, whale sharks (not easily spotted thou as they are not residents of Cocos Island), manta rays, eagle rays, yellow fin tuna, frog fish, garden eels, turtles, sailfish, wahoos, dolphins, moobula rays, green jacks, red lip batfish, and many more. Cocos Island has fourteen different dive sites where you can see these amazing underwater creatures. The best time to visit Cocos Island depends on what you are looking for and how good of a scuba diver you are. If you are a pro scuba diver with at least 25 hours of diving (by the way you have to be a PADI certified scuba diver in order to be allowed to scuba dive at Cocos Island), and you are used to diving with strong currents, then you will want to go during the rainy season (April through November). During the rainy season Cocos Island has the best underwater activity and the largest schools of hammerheads. The downside of the rainy season is that diving conditions and visibility is not as good as in the dry season, there are stronger currents, and choppy waters can occur. If you are not that good at diving with currents and don’t have many hours of diving on your log book, then you want to go to Cocos Island during the dry season (December through May). You will still be blown away by the fantastic underwater activity of Cocos Island and you will have the best underwater conditions, better visibility and not as strong currents as in the rainy season. Water temperature at Cocos Island varies from 74 F to 87 F depending on the season and depth at which you are diving. Three to five millimeter wetsuits are recommended when diving at Cocos Island, Costa Rica.

Cocos Island itself can be visited, but there is no lodging or accommodations available to visitors. You can only stay on the liveaboard that you arrived in, but you can take a one day tour to the island. There are some fairly well kept trails that you can take to see some of the many stunning waterfalls of Cocos Island. Hiking around Cocos Island might give you the chance to spot one of the 70 endemic (species only found there) of animals of which most of them are insects and 70 endemic species of plants. There is approximately 80 bird species of which three are endemic such as the Cocos Island Cuckoo, Cocos Island Finch, and Cocos Island Flycatcher.

If your bank account allows it is an absolute must to do the submarine tour at Cocos Island that Undersea Hunter offers. Yes, they have a tiny submarine (maximum capacity of three passengers, including the captain). The Undersea Hunter submarine, named the DeepSee, can take you as deep as 1500 feet down the marvelous Cocos Island Sea. Can you imagine all you will be able to see in a 360 view at such a depth? Jacques Cousteau called Cocos Island the most beautiful island in the world, so if you are a scuba diver and have a chance and can afford it or save enough to go, you have see for yourself why so many people make such a racket about this World Heritage Site, and believe it when we say that you won’t be disappointed.