Cocos Island of the Sharks

Personal toiletries. Dive gear (or travel light and use our rental gear!) Summer wear, noting that nights can sometimes be chilly which makes a sweater or fleece jacket a good addition. Sunscreen (reefsafe sunscreen will be available onboard with our compliments). Towels and bed linen are provided onboard. Good walking shoes are recommended if you want to go ashore on Cocos.

We provide aluminum 80 cu. ft tanks and weightbelts. Larger steel rental cylinders are available. 5 mm wetsuit recommended to avoid losing body core temp during multiple days of repetitive diving. It’s always better to layer down rather than be cold with no options. We have rentals onboard by prior arrangement for almost anything you need. Please make any rental requests as early as possible.

Pack lightly since you will be dressing for warm tropical weather. At Customs there are no limitations on the personal equipment such as diving, camera and video equipment as well as computers that are for personal use.

Nautilus LifeLines, DiveAlerts and SMB safety sausages

YES and it must be valid six months from entry. US citizens do not require an entry visa to Costa Rica. However, they must have a return ticket to exit Costa Rica within 90 days. (Either to return to your country or to go to another country). Guests visiting us from other countries may not require an entry visa also. Please check the requirements for your country.

Cocos Island is a very remote area and the cost involved in evacuating a diver is very high. Guests are required to have medical and evacuation insurance from a recognized provider before participating in any of our activities. Dive Assure is our recommended carrier. They are really great and have always looked after our guests during difficult situations. Click here to purchase online. The policies are very affordable. We also highly recommend the optional purchase of trip interruption insurance, which covers everything from cancelled flights, weather delays, and lost baggage, to reimbursement if another guest has a medical issue that affects your trip. If you decline coverage, please note that we do not issue credits or refunds for anything that is beyond our immediate control.

You have several options, including Liberia and Panama City. We recommend flying into San Jose (SJO) as it is the closest and most convenient. Please don’t make the mistake of flying into San Jose, California which is SJC. SJO, not SJC! (Yes, someone has made this mistake previously.)

At least one day prior to boarding to avoid any stress from delayed or cancelled airline flights, bad weather at the originating airport, missing luggage, etc.

Arrival back at the Golfito marina by 5 am for those catching the early morning Sansa flight. Early breakfast and 7 am departure for guests heading back to San Jose in our courtesy shuttle (to arrive SJO by 1 pm latest). Or a more leisurely 8:30 am disembarkation for this who are staying on in Golfito (the hotel in the marina is beautiful and well-priced: Marina Bahía Golfito Hotel or heading off for another adventure in one of the nearby national parks.

Yes, we could do it. This is a one day course at SeeCreatures.

YES – with reasonable advance notice. We are pleased to accommodate vegetarian, vegan, lactose intolerance, gluten-free, no sugar, quasi-kosher and quasi-halal. We are likely unable to accommodate more esoteric special dietary requests.

Our ambition is to keep your trip price as low as possible with a la carte options to cater to everyone’s personal choices. Crew gratuities are not included. Neither are rentals, nitrox, internet connection, bar charges, and gift shop purchases.

Your national park fee and the 5% tax will have been included with your pre-trip payment, so no worries about that! We never do fuel surcharges or any other additional fees. There are no fees that need to be paid onboard.

There are so many options. It depends if you want to go straight to Golfito or enjoy adventuring through Costa Rica on a multi-day trip to Golfito. There is a reasonably priced boutique hotel right in the marina at Golfito, Golfito Bahía. Directly contact them (+ 506 4080 6090) with the code Tarifa Nautilus Explorer, for a special package only for Nautilus guests. If you want to stay over in San Jose, we recommend the Marriott Hotel Hacienda Belen, which is 15 min from the airport. Keep in mind that there are 2 different Marriott Hotels in San Jose. We work with the Hacienda Belen. We recommend contacting our concierges for assistance and recommendations with your hotel booking.

If you decide to stay in San Jose after arrival, we recommend taking a metered taxi (official taxi) from the departure hall to the Marriott Hotel Hacienda Belen

Choose between connecting flights with Sansa Airlines (with some luggage restrictions), a private car with a driver, a multi-day tour of Costa Rica, or our courtesy shuttle on the afternoon of boarding (meeting at the Marriott Hotel Hacienda Belen) directly to Golfito. Our concierges are on standby to assist with your arrangements

After 6:30 pm on departure day. We are excited to see you and imagine you will be excited to say hello and get your luggage onboard. However, please allow our super hardworking crew time and space to prepare the ship and resist the temptation to come by before 6:30 pm. The ship sails at 7 pm.

It’s an open ocean crossing to Cocos Island Costa Rica. It can be smooth or it might be rough or more likely, something in-between. The Explorer is our flagship that has steamed through everything, from the current-swept chilly waters of Alaska to adventuring down to Clipperton Atoll, just north of the equator. We highly recommend the scopolamine “patch” and a glass of red wine to relax and have a snooze on the crossing. During the trip, we anchor in the calm anchorage behind Cocos.

50 logged dives and advanced open water is the bare minimum experience required to safely dive around Cocos Island. More experience is better and all divers should have good buoyancy skills. The diving can be challenging. There could be strong current on some dives. Some of the dive sites are in open water and exposed to the swell. The difference between Cocos and a destination such as Socorro is that there is no navy base or airstrip on the island which means that airplane medevac is not possible. If you have a medical issue, the boat will have to return to port or at least be met part way by fast boat. For all these reasons, these trips are best suited for good experienced divers. Don’t worry if you don’t feel that you are quite ready yet for Cocos!! Come and visit us in Baja, Sea of Cortez and Socorro and we will get you all tuned and tweaked up for this great adventure!!!

Yes. At Cocos, current and visibility can change dramatically within several hours. If you were to surface unexpectedly mid-dive, there is the possibility of drifting away and needing to use your Nautilus LifeLine to get rescued. In addition to those challenges, local tiger sharks can show erratic behaviour around your safety stop at 15 feet and it’s very important for our dive guides to keep a watchful eye on them. For all of these reasons, Cocos is a dive destination in which guests have to stay with our dive guides. Our dive guides are highly experienced and excellent and they will do their best to give you all the freedom and headspace you might be looking for in your diving, and of course, we are very focussed on giving shooters what they need (sorry, bad pun). Ultimately, your captain and dive guides are the final authority on whether a guest can do a specific dive or not.

Safety, excellence in guest experience and happy staff and crew are the cornerstones of our business. Nothing is more important than your safety. At Nautilus, we are proud to be the only dive operation in the world with ISM certification and external annual audit of an SMS (Safety Management System). This is the same certification as the largest cruise ships on the oceans. We operate within written processes, procedures and checklists that our captains and crew are trained into both initially and annually. Every dive starts with a briefing on a white board. We require that all divers carry LifeLines marine rescue GPS, SMBs and dive alerts. We will loan you one of ours if you are missing any of this safety equipment. We carry AEDs and extensive medical kits with a contract medical officer available shoreside via our sophisticated satellite communication system. NOTE: because of the remoteness of Cocos Island, we highly recommend a medical checkup before leaving on this trip.

Your dive schedule may vary according to weather, other dive boats and where the action is. You can generally expect 2 dives in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. Entry into the park is restricted and tightly controlled for diving allowing for not more than 65 divers in the park at any one time. An 11 days, 10 nights trip provides for 7 dive days, and 6 dive days for 10 days, 9 nights.

Yes. It’s mandatory for all divers and included for this trip

78- 82 °F (27 – 28 °C).

YES, VERY! Ask about rental cameras and photo pro services.

Well, it’s the rainy season in the tropics!! We recommend casual and cool attire onboard (t-shirt and shorts). It can be drizzly in the afternoons and we recommend bringing a windbreaker and a fleece vest or sweater just in case. Make sure you bring good shoes if you are interested in going ashore for a hike. It’s spectacular onshore. Just wait until you see the waterfalls!

Yes. Internet and WhatsApp connection are available for $120 per trip. Please keep in mind that a satellite tracking system at sea only gives limited speed internet access. You won’t be able to stream Netflix!!

Of course not! We figure that dive boat companies that with fuel, surcharges year-in, year-out are just taking an extra fee onto the trip.

US$ 400 – $500.

Contact our concierges. They will be in touch in the regular way pre-trip to assist with logistics, pre and post activities, transfers and so on. Phone: +1 (604) 241-1918 – Please ask for our concierges. WhatsApp: +52 (624) 129-9243 Email: concierge@nautilusdive.com