Cocos Island...

Bit behind on the old blog right now...seeing that I'm back in Liverpool, sitting in front of the fire (novel!) with a cuppa!
So here's to catching up...

After leaving Costa Rica we headed out to Cocos Island, the largest uninhabited island in the world, for some serious diving.

The 36 hour crossing was pretty uneventful, nice smooth sailing, although we did catch a whopping fish.





We spent from the 4th-8th March anchored off Cocos Island.
Cocos has some of the best diving in the world, especially at this time of the year as this is a big feeding ground for the hammerhead sharks.

Schools of hammerheads with as many as 300 of them have been seen!

....I managed to see 2.
But one of them was a beast!

Last time I was at Cocos was on a different boat (lets call it the "big L") and didn't manage to dive much at all - although hard to complain when you're learning to dive in a top dive site...
...2 years went by without another opportunity and then I was on my way back....
This time however, on a different boat (lets call this one "Tahiti"), even with the owners onboard, I was diving once a day, seeing unbelieveable numbers of fish, chasing sharks and somehow my problem with equalising has magically dissapeared. Fantastic!


We had a live-aboard dive master/park guide from Galapagos who was amazing. He took Byron and I through our dives, managed to order our dive course books (in the middle of the ocean) and have them waiting for us at the next port (Galapagos!), filmed the owners and crew during their dives and made a great DVD at the end of the trip for us all to take away.


There are 3 trails on Cocos, last time we did the waterfall hike - which was awesome, but was closed this time due to heavy rains making the trail impassable - and this time we managed the Chatham Bay trail.
It starts off zig-zagging steeply up the side of the mountain - so you're totally knackered by the time you reach the top - then meanders through all different kinds of trees and shrubs, the guide shows you which ones the wild boars eat and, of course, which ones are endemic. Some beautiful views of the coast line way down below!
Then it all changes...
it pretty much becomes a vertical downhill mudslide with a few knotted ropes here and there at the desperate parts. Lots of fun!


It ends around the other bay, near the rangers station and you can see the 'famous' bridge made from fishing equipment (in one of the photo's at the top). It's illegal to fish anywhere within the Cocos protected area, which extends pretty far out, but they only have like 3 boats to patrol the entire area surrounding the island! When they do find lines and nets though, they haul the entire lot in and take it ashore to put it to good use - there is a bridge, walls, barriers....interesting uses. Whilst we were there they were constructing a path up the side of the mountain, with fences woven from fishing line and buoys!

And then it was on to Galapagos...!!