Okeanos Aggressor II

Diving Cocos Island is amazing, Hammerheads, Tigers, Galapogos ,Whale Sharks, Mantas. 20 -30 hour crossing through rough seas. Once on sight STRONG currents and deep dives. Great diving for experienced divers that are comfortable with BIG sharks. Visibility was from 100ft to 15ft depending on location. The crew/dive guides are excellent, the food is good and plentiful. The boat could use a makeover/drydock, standard cabins are lack luster for the price.That being said, the excellent diving and incredible service of the crew make this a must do trip for any experienced diver.

I traveled to cocos on Dec 2012 with several of my friends in, this has been by far one of the best trips I have ever done . I am a local costarican, so the trip is very simple for me, since I just drive to the port of Puntarenas and that's it. I am on my way!. However, for the rest of you, getting to Costa Rica its super simple. If you are comming from the USA there are direct flights from Orlando, Miami, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Phoenix, Fourt Lauderdale and you can get here with short connections in Salvador (Through Avianca) or Panama (through Copa). If you come from Europe I recoomend Iberia's direct flight from Madrid. From Mexico and South america, Avianca and Copa offer the best connections.If you decide to come to Cocos, consider staying in Costa Rica mainland a few days, there is so much you can do in our country! The amazing part is that being such a small country in just a few days you can go from pacific to atlantic and from north to south. You can visit active volcanos, do world class water rafting, canyoning, canopies, visit rain forests, sport fishing, and many many more activities.The trip to Cocos starts in Puntarenas, where you sail depending on the tide. It must be high tide in order for the ship to be able to exit the shallow channel. From Puntarenas it takes around 36 hours to get to Cocos, depending on the time of the year, the way to Cocos can get a little rough. Our trip had very calm seas. The return is usually calmer since you have following seas all the way to Costa Rica mainland.The Wind dancer is an old boat, but they keep it very nicely maintained. Its not luxurious, but its comfortable. I think it has 6 cabins below the main deck and 2 cabins above the main deck. The main deck is were the dining room is located and a small relaxing lounge. There is a Tv and some movies and 2 computers to share. A few old books and magazines. All this air conditioned.In the main deck but outside its the equipment area, where there is plenty equipment for your scuba equipment and a large table for photo and video equipment, if all the guests bring cameras, you have to wait for a little to work on your equipment since there is no room for everyone at the same time. They have 2 huge camera tanks on each side of the boat.The assign to each person a large space to store your diving equipment. Diving equipment (bcd and regulator) stays in the dingy, where they fill the tanks.The service its really good. All the crew members are friendly and willing to do anything in order to make your trip a great trip. Every time you get out of the water you can take a hot shower in the aft of the boat, and then there will be someone from the crew waiting for you with a warm towel and lots of fruit and pastires.The divemasters are very knowledgable of the dive sites and marine life at the island. They come here everyweek, so they know where, when and what to expect at each site.The diving its just extraordinary. 3 to 4 dives each day. Now there is a limit to 2 or 3 night dives per diver each trip, you can't dive every night anymore. Costarican park rangers enforced a new policy to reduce the number of divers each night at the 2 divesites where you can do night dives. It seems white tips sharks are getting lazy and the just hunt at night using the light of the divers. When they hunt, they go crazy and the damage the corals. This is the reason why they are not allowing everyone to dive each night. But this is not a written policy, it will depend of how many people are at the island on every trip.Cocos is famous for the large schools of hammerhead sharks, but if you look a little closer , you will find that the island is a lot more than just the sharks. You can see whale sharks, huge manta rays, huge shcools of jacks, thousands and thousands of white tip sharks, dolphins, tunas, turtels, marble rays, frog fish, and lots of different tropical fish.There are lots of macro opportunities as well as large pelagics.The new addition to the Island is the visit of a few tiger sharks that can be seen ocassionaly. Finally in my trip we saw a sea lion, probably lost from Galapagos.The water condition was very nice, probably some 30 - 50 ft visibility, depending on the site. Each site has completely different conditions, there are calm dives such as Manuelita (were you do night dives), and also very strong current dives such as Alcyone (were you can see the large schools of hammerheads).One of my favorite spots is the Arch, its a huge arch, probably 30 ft tall and 100 wide. Fish swim upside down on the top part of the arch, its pretty rare! There are lots of marble rays, jacks, and shools of fish.This is a trip every diver should make, its just awsome diving.