Cocos Island is one of the treasures of the planet. The famous Jacques Cousteau called this Costa Rica island the most beautiful island he had ever seen , Costa Ricans have declared this little national park one of its Seven Wonders, and it is being considered as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.
Though it is a small island located nearly 350 miles off the Costa Rica Pacific coast, it is world famous for its unique scuba diving. Indeed, its waters are filled with fish, porpoises, whales, and sea turtles, and there are sometimes so many sharks, it is often called Shark Island. Experienced scuba divers travel here from across the planet because it is renowned as the greatest place in the world to dive with large sea animals.
The island has been famous for pirates, real and imagined, for centuries. It is believed by many that it was the inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson's famous pirate novel Treasure Island but sometimes real pirates sailed to it to escape the English fleet and to bury their treasure. Two great treasures, the Devonshire Treasure and the Lima Treasure, worth hundreds of millions of dollars today, may still be buried there.
Cocos Island also stirred the imagination of author Michael Crichton who set his famed novel---and Steven Spielberg's movie---Jurassic Park there.
The island is very isolated, hundreds of miles from any other land. Except for a few Costa Rica park rangers who are there to prevent its waters from poaching, it is uninhabited. That isolation has protected its rainforest from destruction and until recently its underwater splendor was also unmolested .
If you are lucky enough to visit Cocos, you will only be allowed onshore with previous permission of the rangers. No one is allowed to stay overnight. There you will see boulders and rocks along the shore bearing inscriptions from sailors over the centuries (long before Kilroy was here, sailors wrote their names and dates of visits). You may even find one bearing the name of Jacque Cousteau's son, who signed a rock a couple of decades ago.
About the Author:
About this writer: Victor Krumm writes from sunny Escazu. Visit his popular website about Costa Rica Vacationsand be sure to check out Retiring in Costa Rica.
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