The only way to visit the island is by boat, and there are few that make the trip. From the westernmost port of Costa Rica, it is a 34 hour trip through gutwrenching, open ocean waves that make even the most seasoned traveller a little woozy. So, we left the mainland on a Tuesday morning, and arrived at the island late night Wednesday. Then we just dove and dove and dove - between 3-4 times a day.

It's hard to put into words the experience, but I will try to sum it up as best I can. The island is known most for its pelagics (for those of you who don't know what that is, basically it's big fish)- notably its sharks. On every single dive we were accompanied by at least 50 sharks, most of them white tip reef sharks, ranging in size from little babies of one and a half feet, to big ones of about 6 feet. These guys usually slept on the bottom during the day, or just cruised around, not paying much attention to us. Regardless, it was a little nerve-racking the first few dives just getting used to them. Aside from them, every dive also included gigantic marble rays-- these are beautiful creatures that just glide through the ocean as gracefully as you could imagine, sometimes in schools of 10-20, with a wingspan of anywhere from 2-5 feet. After the third dive, these white tips and marble rays went almost unnoticed.

There is almost no coral in Cocos. The underground formations are mostly volcanic rock, so there is not much color, and not much else to look at besides the fish. There were tons of lobster, moray eels, crabs, jellyfish, turtles, eagle rays, etc., but most of the focus was on the big ones. We often saw schools of hundreds and hundreds of jacks and snappers; everywhere you looked the water was filled with fish. Sometimes the schools were so big and thick that I couldn't see a person floating five feet away-- it was literally a wall of fish. It was pretty amazing to be able to drift through them, having them part a small path for me as I went along. I saw tons of tuna- some of them easily weighing 150 pounds; I swam with pods of bottlenose dolphins more than once, and even if I didn't see them on a dive I often heard them singing in the distance, or had them accompany the boat with tricks and flips in the air.

Perhaps Cocos' most famous attraction is its hammerhead sharks. They come in schools of hundreds, eerily floating above in an endless procession, silent and shy. Unfortunately I came at a time when the migration was in transition, so there weren't so many, but I was blessed enough to see them. The largest school I saw was of about 30 or 40, but in several dive sites lone hammerheads would cruise by majestically. There were also plenty of silvertip sharks (a lot bigger and a little more impressive than the white tips-- also a little more aggressive), and silky sharks. The silkys were the scary ones, for me, anyway. They were much bigger, much more curious, and the only ones who came with a warning. There were no incidents on our trip, but they are known to come up to divers who are floating during their three minute safety stop and start circling around them... I kept my distance where possible.

And of course I can't forget the manta rays. These beautiful and majestic creatures appeared every so often to remind us of the gentler side of the ocean. They would come as one or in pairs, performing their dance, enjoying the bubbles on their bellies, before swimming away.

Needless to say, the diving was difficult. It was not like the calm Caribbean... the currents were usually pretty strong, and when there was no current, there was an extra strong surge. It was hard to get used to being tossed around so much... There were some dives when the current was so strong that if you didn't keep a firm grip on your regulator it would have been ripped out of your mouth, or your mask pushed off your face from the force of the water. Often times it would take all my energy to grab onto a piece of rock to keep from being pulled out into the blue-- on one dive the current was strong enough to push my tank out of my BC!! There was also a thermocline- a point in the water where it went dramatically from one temperature to another- on top it was about 83 degrees, below it was 10 degrees colder. And 73 degrees is cold!!! These conditions, combined with all the sharks and heavy surface conditions, definitely wiped me out at the end of the day.

As if during the day all of this wasn't enough, we often did the night dives. Some of you say, "night dives??? with all those sharks???" Oh yes... the night dives pretty much involved us going to a mellow spot- that means, without much current- and waiting for the sharks (white tips) to wake up. Once the darkness settled in, they started hunting. They would cruise around the small reef and the rocks searching hungrily for food, sometimes alone, sometimes in huge groups. They would jut in and out of rocks and holes, come right up to your mask before turning away, swimming between your legs and underneath you. They came so close so often you could reach out and hug them if you wanted to (not recommended). It was so exciting, so thrilling to be down there with them at night, with nothing but darkness and hundreds of hungry sharks... it's sounds crazy, I know, but it really was incredible. And in the end, as you surface, you turn off all your lights and let the phosphoresence dance around your movements, and you exit the water into the starlight.

And the last day............ perhaps this was one of the most exciting experiences of the trip. As we woke up and went outside on the deck of the boat, we saw hundreds of birds circling over one spot in the water, and diving down. That means only one thing: Bait Ball. What is a baitball?? Also known as a "feeding frenzy", this is when a whole bunch of sharks (hundreds?) get together and start circling the smaller (bait) fish (thousands of them). The fish start swimming in circles closer and closer together and the sharks come up from below, pushing them towards the surface. As they reach the surface they are trapped. The sharks come at them from below, and the birds come at them from above. It is frenzied, fanatical even, unbelievable in its harshness and violence. We took one of the small boats over to get a closer look, and in the middle of the circle of birds you could see the shark fins breaking the surface, splashing everwhere, some of them literally jumping out of the water. As we got closer, the fish all swam under the boat for more safety, and the sharks started ramming into the bottom and sides of the boat with such force we thought we might get hurt!! A couple of people jumped in with snorkels and cameras (not me!!!), but in less than 10 seconds jumped back into the boat so fast they didn't even use the ladders! It was just unreal!! And to think we just drove two minutes away and jumped into that water willingly...

Anyway, that was my experience in Cocos Island, at least part of it. It really is an unbelievable place, a treasure to be sure. Any of you who are divers can appreciate this story, and hopefully can one day have the chance to go there and experience it as well. Those of you who aren't divers, I still hope you can appreciate it.

I am now in a town called Playas del Coco, on the northern Pacific coast of Costa Rica. I have been teaching diving a lot, seeing some incredible stuff (humpback whales, whalesharks, manta rays, schools of 1000s of golden rays, sharks, etc...), and just enjoying a more relaxed pace of life. I can run all my errands, including getting to work, on my bicycle within 15 minutes in any direction. I am in great shape, practically live outdoors, and have not watched tv (except for about 5 movies) since July!!! At night, I cook great food, then lie in my hammock and read, listen to the wind race through the banana trees and the mangoes falling on the roof of the house next door... there are roosters and monkeys that wake me up in the morning... I am only a five minute walk to the beach... My "commute" (this is the best part!!), aside from the bicycle ride through the mountains, is on a 32 foot boat racing over the sea with dolphins following in the wake. It sure beats the A train.