Cocos Island: One of Costa Rica’s Seven Wonders
July 17, 2009 by Victor Krumm
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Cocos Island is a Costa Rica national park that Jacques Cousteau, the famous explorer once called the most beautiful island he had ever explored . Though very few Costa Ricans have ever seen it themselves, they have named it one of Costa Rica’s Seven Wonders, and it is being considered for one of the Seven Natural Wonders on Earth.
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 long been famous for pirates, real and imagined. It is believed by some that it served as inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson’s famous novel Treasure Island but real pirates often sailed to it to get away from the English fleet and to bury treasure. In fact to this day two great treasures, called the Devonshire Treasure and the Lima Treasure, may still be buried there. How big are they? Think hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cocos Island is also the setting for Michael Crichton’s epic novel—and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster movies—Jurassic Park.
With the exception of a few Costa Rica park rangers whose job it is to protect its waters from poaching, the island is uninhabited. Its isolation has protected its rainforest from depredation and until recently its underwater splendor was safe from destruction.
Only a few lucky people get to visit Cocos and if you want to go ashore, you will need previous permission from the rangers. Overnight camping is forbidden. But, no matter. As you walk the shores, looking out over the great Pacific, your imagination can soar. You’ll be walking the very shores that famous pirates hid buried treasure and you will not be alone. It is almost as if some of the stones themselves can talk for you are going to find rocks and boulders bearing the inscriptions of past sailors who left their moment of history behind, writing their names, the names of their ships and ports of call, even the dates. Sailors, long gone but not forgotten by the rocks. Like Kilroy, they were here.
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