+++ Cocos Island +++

Travel Itinerary (subject to change)

September 16 or 17, 2023

We recommend to arrive in San José Costa Rica at least 2 days before the cruise to get a rest and be sure your dive luggage arrived at your final destination. There are many flight from Europe Nonstop to San José (SJO) and we can for sure offer you something. There are a few hotels where Sea Hunter Group will pick the group up on the day of departure such as Grano de Oro or Park Inn by Radisson San José. We work with a renowned travel agency in Costa Rica so if you’re up to any day trips or round trips on the main land we are happy to offer as well as the hotel bookings and transfers.

September 18 to 28, 2023

After breakfast there will be a pick-up for all guests and a ~ 2 hours transfer to the harbor of Puntarenas. After check-in on the vessel the trip departs the same day afternoon. Unpack, relax and meet your dive buddies for the next 36 hours before you reach the magical island of Cocos. 7 full days of probably the best diving worldwide will follow the next days. Generally, we have two dives scheduled for the morning, 8 AM and 11 AM and another dive after lunch, around 2.30 PM. This schedule can vary depending on events, circumstances and opportunities that may present themselves. Our motto is never turn your back on a magnificent bait-ball, which can appear at almost any time. After a short ride, each of the skiffs will reach a different dive site that is alternated on the following dive, allowing the two groups to dive the same areas but at different times of the day. On the way to or from the planned dive sites it is very common for our skiff drivers to seek out the best spots for memorable surface experiences. To watch dolphins, mantas, whales, a promising bait-ball or just cruse up to some of the islands most beautiful attractions, which are only reachable by small skiff.

While at Cocos, several excursions on the island can be planned to complement your dive trips. Most popular is the visit to the isolated Ranger Station at Chatham Bay where pirates, whalers and visitors of yesteryear have carved graffiti on the large beach rocks.

Other excellent options are walks to one of the beautiful waterfalls where, after a short hike through the steamy tropical jungle, you can take a refreshing dip in one of several freshwater pools. Also available, depending on weather, are walking tours of the trail linking Chatham Bay to Wafer Bay. This hike offers marvelous panoramas of Cocos’ remarkable shoreline and a rare glimpse of the island’s daunting interior geography. It’s a nature lovers’ dream with spectacular, ancient tree ferns and bromeliads fighting for space on the huge moss-covered limbs of ironwood trees. The Cocos finch is almost friendly with little fear of man and the wild pigs, transplanted here during pirate days, can often be seen foraging in the clearings.

September 28, 2023

After breakfast we’re back in the harbor of Puntarenas and ready to disembark and say good bye to the excellent crew of M/V Sea Hunter. Theoretically it is possible to fly out of San José the same day after around 3 p.m. However we would not recommed to miss the beauty of this country Costa Rica. There are tons of options to explore the main land on your own or with a tour guide. Ask us for recommendations or tours we’re happy to help and well experienced with Costa Rica.

M/V Sea Hunter

Many have crowned the Sea Hunter as the paramount, purpose-built live aboard vessel, the gold standard for all other dive boats. She is a superbly stable and robust craft, formerly a commercial dive-support vessel, built to serve the oil industry in the Gulf of Mexico. Now redesigned and configured as a consummate hybrid, Sea Hunter combines the large platform, functionality and powerful machinery of a workboat with the comfortable and relaxed interior of a modern yacht. She is 115 feet of flexible capacity and convenience, a dedicated dive cruiser with a global reach, specifically designed and built for long-range expeditions to destinations like Cocos Islands. Sea Hunter has 10 guest cabins with private baths, furnishing live-aboard comfort for up to 20 passengers.

This spacious boat is everything that a serious diver or photographer could wish for – individual gear storage, private camera/strobe storage shelves with 110 & 220-volt AC power, zero-speed stabilizers and even a private washer & dryer for client’s towels and bathing suits. Her roominess and user-friendliness has introduced adventure divers, as well as professional photographers and cinematographers, to an entirely new level of live-aboard facility.

Intro to Cocos Island

Located in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, 300 miles southwest of Cabo Blanco, Costa Rica, lies the renowned Cocos Island Marine Park. A rugged yet incredibly verdant island, this World Heritage Site is the spectacularly beautiful crown jewel of Costa Rica’s many National Parks. In 1994, after several return visits to the island, Jacques Cousteau pronounced Cocos, “The most beautiful island in the world.”

The island has an irregular coastline, which makes precise estimation of its land area more a matter of opinion than a surveyor’s science, but it is roughly five miles by two miles (8 x 3 kilometers). Cocos Island was formed during a volcanic upheaval about two-and-a-half million years ago and is composed of basaltic rock, labradorite and andesite lava flows. Its landmass is punctuated by four mountain peaks, the highest of which is Cerro Iglesias, at 2,080 feet or 634 meters above the sea. There are only two bays with safe anchorages and sandy beaches: Chatham is located on the northeast side and Wafer Bay is on the northwest. Just off Cocos are a series of smaller basaltic rocks and islets. The largest satellite is Isla Manuelita (formerly Nuez).

Thanks to the breathtaking marine life in its waters, Cocos Island was named one of the ten best scuba diving spots in the world by PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) and a “must do” according to diving experts. Among Cocos Island’s many attributes is a startling degree of biodiversity. This island’s world-renowned waters explode with life including innumerable white tip reef sharks, schooling hammerheads, dolphins, mantas and marbled rays, giant moray eels, sailfish, and of course the occasional whale shark. Other common encounters are large schools of jacks and tuna, silky sharks, silver tips, marlin, Creole fish, green turtles and octopus.

Cocos Island is also home to at least 27 endemic fish species including the exotic rosy-lipped batfish. The terrestrial life at Cocos also exhibits a high number of endemic species. The island is home to 70 of the 235 identified vascular plant species in the world, some 25 species of moss, 27 species of liverwort and 85 species of fungus. There are upwards of 87 bird species, including the famous Cocos Island cuckoo, finch and flycatcher. There are 362 species of insects, of which 64 are endemic. Two native reptiles are found only on the Island.