Sapien's Stories

Every 2 or 3 years I get the itch to abandon the serene, relaxing, effortless Caribbean dive trips I usually take in favor of something more extreme. Galapagos in 2003 was the last one, and it was time for another. Two years in the planning, Papa’s Okeanos Aggressor trip to Isla del Coco, Costa Rica, would be my next adventure. And it would prove well worth the wait.

The guest list changed over time but the central idea remained constant: To buy the whole boat and invite a core group of divers and friends chosen for an ability to (a) dive in demanding conditions and (b) spend 11 days together in close quarters and still emerge as good friends. Viewed perhaps by some as exclusionary, elitist and spoiled, we became the Chosen Ones. Named for our shared aversion to internet post whores, our trip became known as Spl00gefest 2006. Thus did 22 of us — unapologetically self-sufficient misfits, pervs, loners and at least one shameless hussy — converge on San Jose’s Alta Hotel on Monday, July 3.

I was among the last to arrive, following a fustercluck at the San Jose airport, just in time to share a drink and a laugh with several of my closest friends before bedtime. In the morning we breakfasted, did an hour of yoga by the pool (the ladies and I, anyway), and boarded a bus driven by an entertaining gentleman named Rudy, who educated us on some of the things that make Costa Roca so special. Careening down the mountainside in our well appointed magic bus (with well maintained brakes and transmission) toward the somewhat nasty port city of Puntarenas, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, we learned these nuggets about our host country:

• Costa Rica boasts a national literacy rate of 96%.
• The luxury of not maintaining a standing army frees up mounds of capital to run a more socially and ecologically responsible country.
• The country’s rich and varied economy relies on tourism, ornamental plants, sugar, coffee, pineapple, butterflies and macadamia nuts, the bulk of which they export happily to Hawaiians who take credit for them.
• Mangos are male fruits (go ahead and snicker). There are also females, which are called Mangas and are physically different. Duh. One is fleshy, one is juicy. Guess which is which.

At dusk Rudy’s magic bus disgorged us onto the dock and onto the deck of the OA, most of us already a little tipsy from large anticipatory doses of Scopolamine and other prescription meds. (Fortunately, several in our group were doctors). By 8 the boat pulled away and by 9ish we were rocking toward our destination in 6-foot seas. The journey would continue for 42 hours.

Word on the street has long held that anyone who does the OA itinerary will inevitably get seasick from the long and rough crossing – even those who never succumb. Not so. Most of us were fine. And during parts of the 300-plus-mile crossing, seas were glassine. We later learned that the first part of the outbound crossing (which had me feeling like an infant rocking to sleep in my mama’s arms) was as rough as it ever gets. So if concern about seasickness has deterred you from booking this trip, file that issue away under misinformation. As for the unusual length of the crossing, think of that as a brief sea cruise before and after your dives.

I have always proudly avoided photography, but this time I made an exception. Christi brought me an underwater camera in its own housing. Soon I was greasing o-rings like a pro, elbowing my way into a coveted spot on the camera table, demanding that my rig be deposited instantly into the rinse tank and showing my profound photographic knowledge. (“I wonder what this button does…”). I am pleased to share a few of my first images with you here, and you are welcome to download any of them royalty-free, as my magnanimous gift to you, Dear Reader.

A 120-foot Italian-built former fishing vessel, the OA is perfectly suited for the trip to Cocos. With its aft spoiler, it moves authoritatively through heavy seas as if carved from a single block of steel. It is not new, but with the exception of some toilet flushing problems early on, it is well maintained, well run and solid. Our crew was pretty solid too:

• Mauricio, captain of the boat as well as one of the pangas
• Onditz, social director, practical joker-in-chief and divemaster/instructor
• Javier, divemaster/instructor and birthday boi
• Douglas (pronounced Doo-glahhs), master chef
• Joel, cow-noise-producing sous-chef
• Mainor, gentle, kind deck hand
• Anibal, indispensable panga-driver
• Juan Castro, overworked, underappreciated engineer

Cocos (We’re not sure how the “s” got there) is one of a geological chain of islands that includes Malpelo and the Galapagos. Approaching it from a distance you get a sense of traveling back in time. The opening sequence of Jurassic Park was reportedly filmed here, and there are steep waterfalls everywhere. The island, surrounded by a Marine Park, boasts a population of about 10 people, including rangers, volunteers and, at one point, a couple of Peruvian prisoners suspected of drug smuggling. Since there’s not a single bar or fast food joint, the locals have to amuse themselves somehow. The TV signal from the satellite dish only gets you so far. So for grins, the rangers built a suspension bridge entirely from buoys, line and other detritus seized from people who violated the no-fishing ordinance over the years.

The weather throughout Costa Rica, as Rudy had explained back on the bus, comes in 2 flavors: Dry and Rainy. July was the rainy season. Cocos makes its own nasty weather as moisture collects and deposits itself on the primitive island. We had 3 flavors of weather: About To Rain, Raining, and Just Finished Raining. One afternoon for a few hours we saw some sunshine. Surfacing in it was glorious. It is a testament to how cool the diving was that the rain didn’t really deter us all that much. It did make for some uncomfortable panga rides to dive sites, and it caused some consternation among us seasoned photographers who had less light to work with, but we persevere.

Approaching Cocos. That's Manuelita on the right. Skies like this were the norm.

Divers come to Cocos for the sharks. Sure, you’ll see other creatures – including marble rays, spotted eagle rays, big-eye and trevally jacks, eels, jawfish, and possibly red-lipped batfish that remind me of my aunt Jane on a bad day. But mostly it’s about sharks: Hammerheads and White-tips (the non-oceanic kind), mainly, but also the occasional Galapagos, Silky and, the week before our trip, reportedly a Whaleshark.

Marble Ray

Trumpet Fish

Puffer

You won’t see much coral but you will see some of the most dramatic underwater topography on the planet. And lots and lots of rocks with immense barnacles on them.

Rock

Oh and did we mention sea urchins? I think every single one of us took a few spines during the week. Some developed an immunity, I think. I’ll admit to kicking a few away in retaliation.

Procedures in Pangaland.

We were mostly a same-ocean crowd, and the crew was not kidding when they said they take buddy diving seriously. Each buddy team was issued an EPIRB (Thanks for wearing ours, Chuck!), and if you didn’t stay with — and surface with — your buddy, you heard about it. This is probably best because, though currents were not usually a problem, they can get strong when the seas kick up, making it hard to be found if you’re drifting toward Japan by yourself. We anchored alternately in one of 2 protected coves: Bahia Chatham and Bahia Wafer, and relied on inflatable pangas outfitted with tank racks to take us to the dive sites.

Most of us had done panga diving before, but the procedures used here took some getting used to. Panga One, with 12 divers, 2 crew and $9 billion worth of camera gear, felt a little crowded at times. Good thing we all knew each other. Instead of being stored on the dive deck, gear is left in place on the pangas. Whips from the main boat were long enough to fill the tanks in place. We would only gear up when we got to the site, between 5 and 30 minutes away. The longer and rougher the ride, the happier you were to not be in your gear.

Our first few dives produced some not-so-subtle kvetching from lots of people, no one more obnoxiously than me, but we settled into it. My biggest complaint about this procedure is that after the checkout dive (the only time we giant-strided off the OA itself) we only got to dive with the people assigned to our panga (i.e. half the group). This is only an issue if you already know everyone on the boat. On reflection, although I can think of different ways to manage logistics, I’m not sure I know of a better way. A third panga, or 2 bigger ones maybe.

The Dives.

Viz was good-not-great, maybe 60 feet. Water temps were generally 81 or 82 with occasional thermoclines, and most days I was fine in a 5/3 hooded vest and a half-mil steamer. Although the sites varied, there were only a few types of dives: Shallow ones featuring lots of white tips and coral, deep ones featuring lots of hammerheads and rocks, and some odd single-purpose ones I didn’t do — including a failed attempt to locate the elusive, ridiculous-looking red-lipped batfish and a site that features silvertips.

White Tips and Coral.

The checkout dive at Chatham Bay, plus the oft-repeated night dives at Manuelita Shallow (both 25 to about 50 fsw) were good examples of the first kind. Like several sites we dove, Manuelita is really a big rock just off the main island, and it has a shallow side and a deep side. If there were a single Signature Dive for this whole trip (there isn’t, but just suppose), the night dive at Manuelita Shallow would be a contender for the title. Swarms of hundreds of white tips, 3-5 feet long, sleek and sexy in their slithery movement, come out just after sunset to feed. They are so preoccupied they do not notice the dozen-plus camera-toting divers who crouch among them and hover above them. Papa has footage of one mistaking his video housing for a morsel of food. The overall effect seeing these creatures in such purposeful, graceful numbers is just breathtaking. I did my first night dive in years just to see it, and I’m glad I did.

As Onditz the DM had predicted, we were enchanted by white tips at first but quickly grew bored with them on the trip’s initial shallow daytime dives. Like nurse sharks, they move effortlessly, sleep a lot during the day, and don’t really get your heart racing. The real action would happen on the deeper dives coming up.

Hammerheads and Rocks.

There was more variety in the deeper dives, which were mostly all about the big guys: muscular, magnificent Scalloped Hammerheads that were 5-7 feet long or more.

Hammerhead

Sites for these dives, mostly in the range of 80 to 120 fsw or deeper, included Manuelita Deep, Dirty Rock, Punta Maria, Dos Amigos (2 rocks: Pequeno and Grande), and the other contender for Signature Dive Site: Alcyone. The deep dives were square, U-shaped profiles with negative entries, sometimes using a line. We would drop as fast as possible, find a comfortable hiding place in the rocks surrounding a Klinnin Esteshin (that’s “cleaning station” to most of you) and wait. As if on cue, the action would commence…

Unless someone like me scares the hammerheads away by advancing toward the Klinnin Esteshin prematurely. So my advice to you, Dear Reader, is this: Always stay the f*ck away from the goddam Klinnin Esteshin. Got it? It pisses off the other photographers and videographers (not to mention the DM and the hammerheads) when you get too close to the goddam f*ckin’ Klinnin Esteshin. Stay back and just watch.

Assuming you do that, the action on and around the Klinnin Esteshins of Cocos is some of the most thrilling diving on this planet. The hammerheads come in by the dozen, sometimes passing so close you could touch them as you cling to the barnacles in your spot. (Gear recommendation: Kevlar® gloves!) You look left, right, up and down and the big guys are everywhere, then they are gone… Wait about 30 seconds and they return. Maybe it says something about us that most of us held our breath in order not to scare them away. If you became uncomfortable with the approach of an animal or you just needed to breathe, you exhaled and they turned on a dime and swam away. Most of us experienced CO2 headaches in one degree or another.

At the end of the deep dives, we would usually see one or several big guys checking us out on our slow ascents. At two of the more remote sites we used an ascent line that was removed when we left the site and sometimes shared with the other liveaboard, Undersea Hunter. By the way, the two boats coordinate dive sites carefully so there’s never more than one panga-full of divers on any one site at a time.

Because of its unprotected location, the topside conditions at Alcyone were unvaryingly horrible — and again, the fact that we gladly did that dive about 6 times, always in nasty conditions, should say a lot about the dive itself. It could be 7 in the morning, raining miserably, the seas kicking, and we would go anyway, with little more than coffee and toast in our bellies — knowing we would get beat up on the 25-minute ride to the site. Those 6-foot rollers that were such a non-issue aboard OA during the crossing sure looked intimidating from a panga. On one dive, our panga took on so much water we had to inflate our rigs, jump over the side and don our gear at the surface. Chris (who was with Papa, JudyG and me when we had to abandon another liveaboard in 2005) noticed that several of our big-guy friends were circling underneath us in an interested way. A bit of a pucker moment. Every single time we dove Alcyone we got beat up in the panga and so did the cameras. And we kept coming back for more. That’s how good it was.

Not every single deep dive featured hammerheads, though they all had marble rays and white tips. One dive at a deep site, I think it was Dirty Rock, ended with a vertical swarm of big-eye jacks that looked like a slo-mo tornado. To swim through and around these guys was magical and disorienting. Who choreographs these creatures? Another dive, at Silverado, was all about silvertips. And I don’t even know the name of the place where they went off looking for aunt Jane.

There were some mysterious happenings on the boat. About halfway through the trip, de-gearing after a dive, I discovered that my feet had turned turned green. Wicked-Witch-of-the West-green that can still be seen on my toenails as I write this. My booties were full of a green liquid, later discovered to be food coloring. Javier reported similar incidents at least 5 times in previous months, and on his birthday he found himself festively festooned with a green foot and a red one. Todd and Pasquale found used condoms (containing, one hopes, a white moisturizing lotion) hidden in their gear. In the only overt act of mischief, Onditz was thrown off the stern of the boat by Pasquale and your gentle reporter while Papa recorded it on video. This was only partly in retaliation for the time she pushed me off Panga One after I stripped the gears and we almost had to return to the boat in reverse. Anibal earned an extra tip that day. As you can see, The Chosen Ones give as good as they get.

The food on OA was good. Sometimes, like when they traded beer for a massive freshly caught yellowfin, it was great. That one animal provided sashimi — twice! — and tuna steaks for 30 people over a few days. Generally, Douglas and Joel served up the kind of cooking that wasn’t pretentious or fancy and didn’t try to be. Salads everyday with lunch and dinner were a standout. Many of us were unaccustomed to black beans and rice for breakfast — a local thing that the locals complained about more than we did. I can see where that might get old after awhile. There was Chilean wine and a coffee/espresso/cappuccino machine; we brought our own Patron and Glenmorangie and were as lubricated as our O-rings.

Nitrox was a must because of the square profiles on the deep dives. It was blended using on-board O2 rather than a scrubber, but the mixes were unpredictable, ranging between 27% and 35% or so. Cost for the week: a reasonable $100.

Cabins were cleaned every day and linens changed every other day. There’s a DVD player and TV in each cabin and a full bathroom setup with plenty of hot water. Oddly, none of the bathrooms had a soapdish. My cabin had an old-fashioned porthole at the waterline (kinda cool while the boat was rocking to see the alternating view) and an unheard-of excess of storage space. Most cabins were tight.

On Wednesday afternoon we headed back to Puntarenas, the return lasting a little less time than the outward trip, but with really fugly weather. No one went home with completely dry gear. Most of the group took a side trip to the rain forest (accent on the first word) and got to glide along a wire suspended over the tree canopy. About 6 of us went direct to the hotel in a smaller magic bus hosted by Rudy, Jr. We all met up (the tree canopy people having showered their mud away) at the Alta Hotel’s bar for cocktails before dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Several of us had problems leaving the next day, partly because the airspace over the San Jose airport was closed for a time. My flight was cancelled completely, causing a four-hour period of sitting on the floor with a dozen fresh-faced missionaries in matching t-shirts asking about my thoughts on the afterlife. Which is a close approximation of hell as far as I’m concerned.

But let’s not dwell on the negative. I wanted extreme, and I got it. Cocos is an extremely beautiful place. OA is an awesome boat. Sploogefest 2006 was a great trip and the Chosen Ones are one amazing group. Next up: think I’ll go for something serene.

Travel notes. Ken Scarborough at Ultimate Dive Travel handled the details and yet again earns his reputation as THE travel company for divers. Booking people like Rudy and hotels like the Alta would have been a crapshoot if we’d made our own arrangements. Both were great choices. The Alta Hotel, carved into the mountain surrounding San Jose, was immaculate with well-appointed rooms and a good restaurant. Admittedly the service in the restaurant was slow and clueless, but hey, it wasn’t exactly a business trip. American Airlines, despite the mishaps on the back end, did right by me. They got me a first class seat on Continental to Houston, and when I missed a connection to Miami, they comped me a hotel room and 3 meals. I had to push a little to get these concessions but they did the right thing in the end. The airport in San Jose is a real problem. While Costa Rica has clearly risen above third-world status, the capital city’s airport has not. The constant uncontrolled crowds at the airport were menacing, and the whole place reeks of bad design, planning and crowd control. If you make this trip, just steel yourself for that part of the experience. And go anyway.