Sharks, sharks, sharks
Written: Dec 24 '99
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Pelagics beyond your imagination.
Cons: Its a long, long way to Tipperary....
|
|
|
| dpowers1's Full Review: Cocos Island |
The first time I went to Cocos Island was a total disaster. Booked aboard a tramp vessel, "The Albert", 10 of us were scheduled to spend 10 days on Cocos, the world's largest uninhabited island. But, the captain didn't have clearance to leave the port of Punta Arenas (Costa Rica) for three more days. So there in the sweltering tropics, we cooled our heels in the non-airconditioned tub. We finally set sail - and arrived after an uneventful journey. There was a moment when we passed through a pod of several hundred dolphins which put on quite a show for us, lasting well over an hour. Finally we made it to Cocos. It was everything we had hoped for. Well worth the 30 hour trip, well worth the stifling air below decks. Well worth the poorly prepared food, served out on the deck under a canvas awning. There were 125 - 150 hammerhead sharks on every dive, southern stingrays too numerous to mention, white tipped reef sharks in every nook and cranny. Cocos is apparently a continuation of the Galapagos chain - but at quite a distance. The island is lush and green with only a small Coast Guard station to protect it. It contains 365 waterfalls which pour down from the heights in a stunning array of rainbows. Wildcat fishermen could be seen poaching on the sea life. Not a coral island, Cocos is rather a stone outcropping. The diving is excellent - with astounding numbers of pelagics and myriads of schooling reef fish on every side. We managed to ride on a manta one afternoon, and on another occasion at sunset in lovely Wafer Bay, we watched as several mantas kept leaping out of the water at feeding time. But the stars of the show were the hammerheads and other sharks. The "Albert" had been jerry rigged as a dive boat. It had two leaking Zodiacs which had only small unreliable outboard motors, no compass, no water, no oxygen - a recipe for disaster. The elderly "Albert" would moor in one of the bays around the island, mostly Chatham Bay and Wafer Bay. From there, we would set out in the Zodiacs to find the many dive sites. Had the motor on one of the Zodiacs failed, and we had drifted off, the "Albert" would not have been able to come after us. The cranky (World War I) diesel engine required 2 hours to build up a head of steam before it could leave the harbor. By that time, in a small leaky Zodiac, in a large ocean we would have drifted half way to Fiji. We dove for 6 days before heading back to Punta Arenas. (We had been promised 10 days of diving.) We later were told that the owner of the "Albert", who was acting as captain, had been smoking funny cigarettes and using other hallucinogenic substances while we were in his care. We even ran out of food before the trip ended. But, the diving was wonderful and more than made up for the poor and life threatening conditions on board the "Albert." He could not communicate with the Spanish speaking crew, a task which fell to me. At the end of my trip, I vowed that I would return - and soon. But never, never aboard the "Albert." The trip was so bad that at the end of the voyage, we 10 passengers proposed a Class Action Suit against the owner of the agency who had promoted the trip. The lawsuit never materialized. I guess we all just said, "To hell with it." Ten months later (in December of that same year) I found myself booked on the "Okeanos" for a return trip to Cocos. What a difference between "Albert" and Okeanos (which was not yet part of the Aggressor Fleet). There were 16 of us aboard the ship - for it was a ship, replete with a heli-pad on its top deck. Gourmet meals, luxurious, air conditioned cabins, two dive masters, well equipped launches, etc. etc. Everything that the "Albert" was not.It was still the private yacht of the wealthy Pozuelo family from San Jose Costa Rica, one of whom was aboard. The only negative was that the captain of the ship could not locate Cocos Island and so we spent an entire day roaming aimlessly around the Pacific looking for the Island. The thirty hour trip became a 54 hour trip! Yuk. But we finally found Cocos. A lovely, glorious sight. And the pelagics and schools of jacks, and the multitudes of mantas and all those other big fishies were out there waiting to be seen. The owners of Okeanos gave us an extra day of diving to make up for the day which we lost while searching for the island. My only complaint is that such high tension diving - with all those pelagics, has made all my subsequent diving seem like child's play.
I'm going back again some day....
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dpowers1
|
|
Member: Dan Jensen
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 1 member
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.