Cocos Island

I hadn´t heard about Cocos Island until I reached Shelter Bay Marina about a month ago. This is surprising as I cruised Costa Rica in the mid nineties and have talked with dozens of sailors who have been to the Galapagos, yet no one had ever mentioned this island. Jacques Cousteau described this island as the most beautiful in the world and it also happens to be the largest uninhabited island in the world as well. Divers seem to be more aware of Cocos as it is often listed as one of the top diving sites. Part of the reason why this island is unknown is not only because of its isolation (300 miles off of Costa Rica and 400 north of the Galapagos) but because the only way to visit the island, aside from having your own boat, is to take a liveaboard dive trip which costs about four to five thousand dollars for seven days. Being a national park, there are no facilities onshore for overnight guests and there is no airport. There were only eighteen people on the island and they were either park rangers or scientists. Besides Pelican, the only other boats at anchor were two dive boats, the Argo and Wind dancer, and a National Geographic research boat...



Here are some radom shots of the boat graffiti at Chatham bay. It was quite a feeling reading the names of all the past sailors to have visited the island.