No, this time my vacation was not endangered at all by the hazards of weather, incompetent, lying airlines or the fates. Yes, you read that correctly. Believe it or not, I made it to my vacation destination on time with no difficulties at all. I'm still a bit stunned. Outside of a weather related delay out of Chicago on the last leg of my trip home, everything ran like clockwork. And weather related delays out of O'Hare? You could have knocked me over with a lead pipe.
This time around, my destination was the Parque Nacional de Isla de Coco. Cocos Island, as it is more commonly known, is a 5 mile wide island seamount that rises up from the depths of the Pacific, about 300+ miles southwest of Costa Rica. For you nautical types, it is at 5 deg, 33 min North latitude, 87 deg, 03 min West longitude. It is like the truck stop of the Pacific for larger pelagic species, most abundantly, hammerhead sharks. Deep ocean currents bring cooler, nutrient rich waters up Cocos' steep underwater topography, where it mixes with warmer surface waters to support an amazing ecosystem. All levels of the food chain are represented, from the tiny resident bait fish, to the transient pelagics, such as manta rays and whale sharks. Above ground it is a mountainous tropical rain forest, uninhabited except for a small ranger station. Cocos has only two seasons: wet & dry, and receives over 27' of rain annually. Since August is in the middle of the wet season, it did indeed rain every day with only a few breaks of sun. No worries though, we did see more than or our share of rainbows whenever the sun did break through, and the diving is better in the wet season.
I flew out of New York on Saturday, August 11th, with San Jose, Costa Rica as my final destination. Due to United Airlines restrictions on frequent flyer rewards, I was routed via Los Angeles, and then on an overnight flight through Guatemala City to San Jose. Certainly not the shortest distance between the two points, but both my luggage and I arrived at 7:45am on Sunday, August 12th.
Knowing that Los Angeles International can be a black hole of luggage, and having been warned that indirect flights into San Jose often experience luggage anomalies, I was working under the theory that the crappier looking luggage is less likely to be stolen. All my expensive dive gear went into the oldest, most beat up suitcase that I had, which was wrapped in the all purpose theft deterrent material: duct tape. And you know what? It worked! My butt ugly bag rolled right onto the baggage carousel in San Jose. I grabbed it, and was off and running for easy clearance of Costa Rican customs and immigration.
A quick taxi ride brought me to the front door of the Hotel Santo Tomas, a beautifully restored guest house just a few blocks from the center of San Jose. Even though it was about 8:30am when I arrived, they had my room ready for me. I took a quick nap to try and recover from the jet lag induced by traveling west three time zones, and then back one zone east, and from the general lack of sleep one gets on a red eye. It was about noon when I headed out for lunch and a stroll around San Jose.
San Jose has all the trappings of a Central American capital city. Plazas with historical buildings, a claustrophobic Mercado Centrale, surrounded by McDonald's and a ton of stores. Mostly shoe stores. All of them blaring music at truly annoying volume out into the street. Most of the residents of San Jose must have at least three feet to justify the number shoe stores on each block. And the stuff in the windows was even bigger, klunkier and uglier than the atrocities that pass for fashionable footwear in the US.
After walking around for a while getting my bearings in the city, I headed back to the hotel. I made the mistake of lying down again, thinking that I'd grab another quick power nap before dinner. I chose badly. The fact that I had only taken one day off from work since the beginning of January, and had worked an awful lot of weekends had definitely caught up with me. I ended up waking up at 9:45pm, far too late for dinner at most restaurants in a very Catholic country on a Sunday night. So back to sleep I went.
I got up early on Monday August 13th, as it was my only day to do any land based sightseeing. I had booked a spot on a bus tour that started in San Jose, and headed out into the countryside. Our first stop was a coffee plantation for breakfast and a tour. From there, we headed up to the Poas Volcano, and hiked around a cloud forest. We headed southeast along the continental divide, stopping at the La Paz waterfall for a photo opportunity. We stopped for a coffee break, and a snack comprised of yucca & onions at a hummingbird gallery which overlooked the San Fernando waterfall. We continued on to the Selva Verde Rainforest Lodge, where we had lunch followed by a short walk in the rain forest. From there, it was back on the bus down to the SarapiquÌ River where we climbed aboard a boat for a ride downriver while watching for various birds, howler monkeys and large iguanas in the trees along the rivers edge. We also saw some banana plantations along the banks of the river
After the prerequisite stop at the souvenir shop, we boarded the bus for a ride through the Braulio Cabrillo National Park on our way back to San Jose. Not a bad amount of stuff crammed into 12 hours for $80.
The following morning, August 14, is when the excitement began to mount. I was met at my hotel by Mario Arroyo, who is something of a legend as far as divemasters go at Cocos Island. I was the first of the 18 passengers be rounded up. Once we were all accounted for, we began the 2+ hour ride to Puntarenas, home port for all three of the boats which ply the waters of Cocos. Along the way, Rudy the bus driver did double duty as tour guide and cultural ambassador for Costa Rica.
It was low tide when we arrived in Puntarenas, so our ship was moored out in deeper waters. We were quickly transferred out to the Sea Hunter on a small local boat. The Sea Hunter is 115' long with a 26' beam. It was originally a crew boat that serviced oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico during the 80's. She was purchased in 1995 and went through a complete refit to turn her into the awesome "Global Dive Support Vessel" she is today. The ship is large, roomy and most importantly, stable. Considering that when we left harbor, we were carrying 35 tons of fresh water and 40 tons of diesel fuel, I should hope that she was stable. I knew right as I stepped on board that they were serious about diver safety. I counted 28 large cylinders of oxygen for use in partial pressure Nitrox blending and in case of emergency.
Although the ship itself could go faster than 10 knots on the crossing out to Cocos, the passengers and anything fragile, cannot. The crossing to Cocos runs in a southwest direction, into a prevailing wind and sea. Translation: it can be damn rough and choppy! If the captain tried to make the crossing in less than the typical 36 hours, probably every plate, cup and saucer would be reduced to rubble! I was all prepared for the rough seas with a prescription for the Transderm Scop, an effective patch worn behind one ear to prevent motion sickness.
We left Puntarenas mid Tuesday afternoon, and we were treated to one of the most gorgeous sunsets that I have ever seen. We arrived late Wednesday night. Thanks to the patch, I was fine all the way out, with only one little bout of queasiness after spending a little too much time amidships in an interior cabin during a rebreather refresher course. A few minutes of fresh air out on the huge back deck cleared that right up. Others were less fortunate, and as one of my fellow passengers put it, he was merely renting his meals during the crossing. I think there was a collective sigh of relief when we finally moored in Bajo Manuelita.
The excitement of diving, or just the sheer relief of being moored had most of us up and out on deck well before the 7am breakfast bell. The crew was already hard at work getting ready for the diving. The Sea Hunter is fitted with a 12 ton crane (and counterbalanced by 20 tons of poured concrete) that is used to lift to two 24' fiberglass skiffs, known as pangas, down from their traveling position above the dive deck. These two pangas are a major selling point for this vessel. Since the mother ship stays moored in the bay most of the time, it is the pangas that take you back and forth from the ship to the various dive sites. In the vast and sometimes wildly unpredictable Pacific, I had much more confidence in our pangas with their twin 90hp outboard motors, than the inflatable zodiacs with a single outboard that we saw the other boat using.
We pulled up right next to the Okeanos Aggressor in the bay, because Hugo, our captain, wanted to say hello to Wayne Hasson, the owner of the Aggressor Fleet, who happened to be on board that week. Additionally, it was a celebrity charter on the Aggressor. Not Stan Waterman or some other renown underwater photographer. No, the celebrity was David Hasselhoff, without his Baywatch cohorts.
I hate to burst the bubble of the Aggressor-centric people reading this, but the Sea Hunter rules as far as liveaboards go in Cocos. IMHO, the Sea Hunter's only competition at Cocos is from its smaller sister ship, the Undersea Hunter. Both Hugo and Mario used to work on the Aggressor. When asked why they switched, they both answer emphatically and without hesitation, that the Sea Hunter is a better vessel.
OK, enough gratuitous advertising for a while.
After a large breakfast, we all headed out to the dive deck and began to gear up for the first dive at Manuelita Island. The first dive is always nice, because all your gear is nice and dry when you get ready. By the second dive, getting into a damp wetsuit is like wrestling an alligator. We had a short panga ride to the first dive site, and with an easy back roll into the 80 degree F water, we began the first of seven glorious days of diving. It didn't take long before we discovered that in Cocos, there is truth in advertising. We soon saw hammerheads, white tip reef sharks and marble rays in abundance. They proved to be our constant companions on almost every dive. We did 4 dives that day, including a current-swept night dive that dragged us way out near the point of Manuelita Island. This was a little disconcerting as we were being driven towards an area where silky sharks are known to feed at night. We were quite happy when the panga came out to get us.
And from that point on, the daily regimen was engraved in our minds:
7:00am - Breakfast
8:00am - Dive
9:30am - Apres-dive snack
11:00am - Dive
1:00pm - Lunch
3:00pm - Dive
4:30pm - Apres-dive snack
6:00pm - Night Dive
7:00pm - Dinner
9:00pm - Collapse
The final dive of the second day was especially cool, as it was my rebreather refresher dive. I had completed my certification on the Draeger Dolphin semi-closed circuit rebreather on my trip to the Red Sea in June, 1999. Unfortunately, rebreathers are not readily available for rent in many of the destinations that I have visited, so I had not used one in over two years. It turned out to be like falling off a bicycle... Actually, I found using the rebreather to be much more enjoyable on this trip than I recalled it from the past. It allows for reduced use of the gas in the cylinder and a virtually silent and bubble-less diving experience. Once I had completed the refresher class and dive, I was free to rent the rebreather as much as I wanted for the duration of the charter. I ended up renting it for three whole days and made 10 more dives on it.
The truly best dive on the rebreather was at a site called Alcyone. Basically you work your way down an anchor line, find a comfortable, sea urchin free spot among the rocks and watch the show. I found a little outcropping away from the crowd of divers and I had my own private show for a while. With the reduced noise and bubbles from the rebreather, the hammerheads were coming in and around me in droves. It was absolutely brilliant for about 12 minutes until some of the other divers came by and found a spot on another outcropping about 15 - 20' in front of me and slightly deeper. I could have probably made a similar move, but as I was already down 90', I didn't care to push the maximum operating depth of the nitrox mixture in the inhalation bag of the rebreather. I stayed down to within 2 minutes of my no-decompression limit, and then made my way back to where the anchor line had been. Note the past tense in that last sentence.
Alcyone was the only site where the panga was anchored. The divemaster had to pull the anchor and float it to the surface with a lift bag when he had to ascend. Unfortunately, when that happened, there were still three of us still watching the show. I guess that means he trusted our dive skills. I knew my underwater navigation wasn't that bad that I couldn't find the anchor line back to the boat, so I assumed that it had been pulled. I saw the other two divers and we began our slow free ascent to the surface. We sent up a lift bag as a marker buoy while we did our safety stop at 15', but in the choppy seas, it was like a needle in a haystack. It did help keep us all together at the same depth though. In choppy seas, divers will use a safety sausage as a surface signaling device. It is basically a red or orange tube that is inflated and used to indicate position. When we broke the surface a few minutes later, I reached for my sausage, and realized that in the process of switching from my gear to the rebreather, I had forgotten it. One of the other divers had one, and even though it was kind of wimpy and folded over in the wind, it did the trick. The panga, which had been maintaining position over the dive site, came to get us. When I got back to the Sea Hunter, I immediately got my sausage and clipped it to the rebreather. The one I have is over 5' tall, and 6" in diameter, with a purge valve, and will stay upright in all but the strongest gales. And, of course when the boat comes to pick you up, you get the rousing chorus of, "Is that a safety sausage, or are you just happy to see me?"
Another favorite dive site is called Dirty Rock. It is a series of pinnacles, with a smaller submerged one about 30' off of the larger main one which breaks the surface. Like Alcyone, we did multiple dives on this site, and every one had it's own highlights. On one dive, the site was just swarming with marble rays by the hundreds. On another, we swam out into the blue right into the middle of a huge school of big eye jacks. On yet another dive, I was both blessing and cursing the rebreather at the same time. The current between the two pinnacles and around the larger one was just ripping, and I was finning really hard to cross between the pinnacles. The rebreather's larger, bulkier profile created more drag and made moving around more difficult. However, it's breathing characteristics are such that no matter how hard I was working, I never once felt like I was going to over-breathe it. Once I made it over to the main pinnacle, I took a page from my Galapagos experience, and just worked my way along the rocks, slowly ascending to about 20' where I stayed and did my safety stop. When I was ready to ascend, I just kicked out across the current and made a textbook final ascent to the surface.
The Sea Hunter stayed moored by Manuelita most of the time, but one day we did shift over to Bahia Wafer so that we would have a shorter ride to 2 dive sites called Dos Amigos. We moved over early in the morning, and as we were waking up, we were greeted to a most unpleasant surprise. There was a boat moored in the bay, and there was a man standing on the back deck with a shotgun. No, they were not pirates, per se. The man with the gun was a park ranger. Turns out that the boat was an Ecuadorian long line fishing vessel that was illegally laying miles of baited hooks within the protected boundaries of the marine park. The crew were placed under arrest, and were being sent back to Ecuador, except for the captain who was going back to Costa Rica to face charges. However, the reality is that he will probably get a slap on the wrist and be back in business in a short while.
During one of our surface intervals, Hugo, our captain, took another passenger and I out to watch the rangers clearing the long lines. These heavy duty lines had hooks spaced out probably 15 - 20' apart, some of them baited with a large squid. About 15 minutes after we arrived, the rangers began pulling on a line that was going down deep into the water, rather than floating on the surface. That signaled that something was on that line. Indeed there was. After what seemed like an eternity, they pulled up a sailfish that had to be at least 8' - 10' long. That's when my feeling of revulsion went off the scale. I would have killed to have seen one of these beautiful creatures on a dive, but instead we got to see it floating upside down on the surface. At that moment, I could have killed any member of the fishing boat's crew with my bare hands. Trust me. After the rangers released it from the hooks, we thought we saw it move a little bit, so we went over and tried to right it, hoping that it had a little life left. However, our efforts were in vain.
On our way back to the Sea Hunter, we passed another boat with rangers bringing back a boat full of dead hammerheads and another dead sailfish. When we got back to the bay, the rangers granted us permission to board the fishing boat, and snap off some pictures of the carnage. We did, and were greeted with a boat deck covered in blood and entrails. We found out later that the toll from this fairly minor incident was the death of multiple hammerhead sharks, some silky sharks, plus more sailfish and tuna. Most of this was just so these fucking bastards could cut off the sharks' fins for sale to the Asian market, where shark fin soup is a delicacy. I'm not sure which is worse, killing in this manner, or the more cruel manner of catching the shark, cutting off its fins and throwing the still living and now helpless shark back into the water to die. These practices are unfortunately common worldwide, but seem even more tragic to me in both the Galapagos and Cocos. There was a good article about this topic in a recent edition of Rodale's Scuba Diving magazine.
Coincidentally, on the day that we moved to Bahia Wafer, a ship called the Ocean Warrior, which is operated by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, happened to be moored up at Manuelita. Sea Shepherd is an environmental activist group run by Capt. Paul Watson, one of the founders of Greenpeace. He eventually left Greenpeace because they weren't radical enough for him. I'd have to say that the members of Sea Shepherd are environmental terrorists in a way. They have rammed and sunk vessels to protest whaling, etc. They were some of the first responders to the oil spill in the Galapagos, and are beating down the US Navy's testing of Low Frequency Active Sonar due to its destructive results on marine life. Normally, I'm so politically incorrect that I have my own hole in the ozone, but the events of the day almost made me want to sign on with them. Call me a shark hugger...
The Ocean Warrior was on its way to the Galapagos where Sea Shepherd operates a ship called the Sirenian to chase down illegal fishing boats within the boundaries of the Galapagos' protected waters. They had stopped many boats over the last year, only to watch them be released by Vice Admiral Gonzalo Vega of Ecuador's merchant marine. Sean O'Hearn, the captain of the Sirenian had to return to the US, and while he was home, Ecuador revoked his visa. By some political twist, he was still allowed in the Galapagos, but could not go through Ecuador. So the Ocean Warrior had picked him up in Costa Rica, and was delivering him to his ship in the Galapagos. Our captain invited Captains Watson and O'Hearn, and another member of the Sea Shepherd crew to our ship for dinner, and they gladly accepted.
As much as most of these issues seem to be outside our realm of reality, it really does stem back to human consumption. I didn't realize that the largest buyer of tuna in Ecuador is Bumble Bee Seafood, which operates a cannery in Manta, Ecuador. It is a reasonable assumption that some percentage of the fish they use is caught within the boundaries of these protected marine parks. When people from the US and other countries try to exert pressures on the locals and their government, they are typically greeted with a curt, "Gringo, go home," if not worse. It's gotten me wondering when the last time I had tuna salad was, and making me rethink my love of sushi a bit.
With all the diving on this trip, with sharks galore, I did not witness any behavior that was at all aggressive towards humans.Then I come home and get inundated with stories of shark attacks up and down the east coast. Kinda makes me think that the Caribbean sharks are pissed off at humans for their treatment of their Pacific cousins.
OK, off my soap box, because after the events of September 11, it seems trivial...
I'd say the majority of our dives were in the 80 - 100' range, which usually kept us above the colder thermocline layer. On average, the temperature at depth was about 78 degrees, and I was usually fine in my 5mm wetsuit. Occasionally, the thermocline would be a little shallower or deeper. Such was the case one day at a site called Dos Amigos Pequeno. At about 80' we hit a thermocline that dropped the temperature to about 74 degrees. Since water conducts heat away from your body 25 times faster than air, those four degrees or so feel measurably colder. Naturally, all the action was at about 90 - 95', and I was kicking myself because my extra wetsuit and hood were sitting back on the ship. DOH! Had the show not been so spectacular, I would have been up at 75' or so. But we had squadrons of hammerheads coming out of the blue, a feeding frenzy of white tips right in front of us, rays of all kinds and huge schools of jacks around us for the entire dive. When we reluctantly pulled away from the rock, and out into the blue for our safety stop, we were greeted by a playful pair of 6' mobula rays that stayed with us for the rest of the safety stop.
And so, after 7 days at Cocos, 24 dives, and 17 hours, 31 minutes underwater, we were underway for the 30 hour crossing back to Puntarenas. Shortly after leaving the island, we were joined by a pod of dolphins playing in our bow wake, which was totally reminiscent of my trip to the Galapagos. Unlike the crossing to Cocos, the trip back runs with a trailing sea. The gentle roll of the ocean made the trip back totally pleasant and relaxing. We had plenty of time to let the dive gear dry, pack up our stuff, read books, etc. We arrived back in Puntarenas early on the morning of August 24, and I experienced an uncomfortable phenomenon. I had to put on my sneakers. I had basically been barefoot but for dive booties for 10 days. We quickly boarded the bus for our 2 hour ride back to San Jose. Some of the others went straight to the airport to catch a 1pm flight out of Costa Rica. I had decided that I didn't need to rush, and had booked a hotel near the airport for that final night.
After checking in and dropping off my luggage, I headed back into the Mercado Centrale ready to pick up a few souvenirs. Knowing the reputation of the Costa Rican coffee, and having savored it for two weeks, I had packed an extra backpack for the sole purpose of carrying back many pounds of coffee. Well, I needed an extra shopping bag on top of that, because all 22 pounds of various coffees would not fit in the backpack! I should be on a caffeine buzz until the New Year!
My flight out of San Jose was at 6:00am on Saturday, August 25, so getting to the airport at 4:00am was a chore, especially now that I was laden with all that coffee on top of all my other gear. As I went through the security checkpoint, the non-English speaking guard motioned to me that he wanted to hand inspect my stuff. I motioned back that he could open anything he wanted. I assumed that he would start with my regulator bag, which must look like a bomb in the X-ray machine with all it's hoses and big brass fittings, but I was mistaken. He started with my backpack and made me open a bag of coffee for him to inspect. That's when it hit me that cocaine is often smuggled inside of bags of coffee to throw off the drug sniffing dogs. Finally after squeezing and shaking and sniffing one of the bags of coffee, he handed it back to me to repackage. Then he opens my regulator bag and just kinda stands there dumbfounded. I reached in, pulled out my reg, put it in my mouth and simulated breathing. He looked at me and asked, "Swim?" I just nodded my head and he walked away.
Remember the silly routing via LA & Guatemala City on the way to San Jose? Well, my return routing was through Mexico City and Chicago, en route to Westchester County Airport. Again, the flights went like clockwork out of San Jose and through Mexico City, and we landed right on time at Chicago O'hare. Although it took an eon before luggage started coming down the carousel, I was pleased to find that my bags had indeed made it to Chicago. I cleared customs & immigration, rechecked my luggage and headed for my gate. As I was on the people mover, the skies just opened up and it poured rain as the fog rolled in. Perfect Chicago weather. So I sat at my gate reading as flights were being delayed all over the place. Since I was scheduled to have a 3 hour long layover anyway, it didn't really affect me too much.
The weather broke quickly, and flights started heading out. As it turned out, most of the passengers for my flight had run to catch the earlier flight, so my plane was basically empty. To attest to that fact, the gate agent called us up to the plane by name, instead of by row number! As I headed to the gate, I said to the agent, "I guess you're taking a bath on this flight." She just grinned and nodded. Once on the plane, I think the ratio was one flight attendant for every 2 passengers. Once we pushed back from the gate, we discovered that we were about the 30th in line for take off on a Southern runway, and there were at least that many lined up on a Northern runway. So we sat for over an hour on the tarmac inching our way up. Compared to some of the other nightmares that I have experienced in my travels, this was like a walk through the park. I landed in Westchester County at 10:00pm, about an hour late, and headed home. So my hat is off to United Airlines for a generally excellent travel experience.
Sunday the 26th was all about cleaning and drying my dive gear, followed by going through 2 weeks worth of mail and email. Then it was back to the office on the 27th. Now i'm back to cold water diving in the Northeast, just in time for September & October, which are typically the best months of the year for diving. I dove on Labor Day, and will be out diving at least one day every weekend through September.
So there you have it boys and girls, the latest and greatest of my trip reports. As always pass this along to anyone who you think would enjoy reading the tale.
