Flew Continental arriving a couple of days early because I had concerns of my dive gear not making it. We stayed at Adventure Inn, San Jose until we cabbed over to the Marriot Courtyard for our pick up to be taken to Puntarenas to board the Okeanos Aggressor liveaboard going to Cocos Island. The Aggressor only picks up at the Marriot or the Alta but I didn’t like the price tag that came with these hotels so we decided to stay at the Adventure in. The Adventure Inn was amazing and inexpensive. The cab ride to the Marriot was a mere 12 US so it more than made up for the cost of the Marriot. For 79.99 US per night (10% discount if paying cash) got you a nice BIG room, clean, great staff, and a full breakfast. This place was amazing. It was probably one of the best hotels I have stayed in. For every day you stay there you get free entrance to a water park that is about a 10 minutes walk. This hotel is owned by a Canadian who went there in 1994 and never came back. Nancy, who worked the front desk was very personable and did everything in her power to make our stay memorable. If you go to San Jose I suggest you stay at this hotel. Anyway, we board the Okeanos and the trip out was rocky. There were four divers who got pretty seasick. I was lucky as I took Bonamine and it worked great for me. We get to the island 35 hrs later and anchor in a bay. We do our check out dive and it was awesome. White tip reef sharks everywhere, not to mention guinea puffers, lobsters, eels, plus a multitude of fish that I can’t name. We do our "real" dive and hammerheads everywhere. All I can do is stare in awe. The week of diving was all hammerhead, white tip sharks, marble rays, eagle rays and a many fishes. I did four night dives and one was amazing. I got to watch about 50 white tip reef sharks go into a feeding frenzy about 3ft below me. WOW…. what else can I say. Now about the liveaboard. The food was ok. Nothing special per say. Don’t get me wrong. It must be hard to feed 22 divers all that food when you are 36hrs away from everything, but it was nothing to write home about. The boat staff (and that I mean non-divemasters or skiff captains) were amazing. There english wasn’t the best but they did their best to accommodate everybody.
Now for the divemasters. In my opinion, I may as well have been diving on my own. I only saw them on two-three occations. It appeared they cared more about getting their personal underwater photos and videos than they did the clientel. There was one man who was on his fourth Okeanos trip and they didn’t seem to mind showing him around personally. In fact, this man was apparantly so special that when two women on our skiff got hit with jelly-fish after our dive, the divemaster and captain thought it would be beneficial for this man to go and get footage of the island for 10 minutes before returning to the Okeanos where these women could get some vinegar to sooth the sting.
Another incident happened on our skiff. We were on our way to Alcyone (dive site) and the motor crapped out. No biggy. It happens. They tried and tried to get it going for about 10 minutes. So, as we are floating about in the skiff the boat captain calls the Okeanos. He called for approximately 5-10 minutes and NOBODY was responding. The other liveaboard was responding to us, but not ours. They did eventually get the boat going, but it was a bit unnerving knowing that if there had been a medical emergency then the Okeanos would not have responded. Overall my diving was amazing. In my opinion it could have been better if the divemasters would have paid half the attention to the clientel as opposed to their cameras. There were certain fish I did not see because only the divemasters knew where they lived and they were never around to show me, even after I had specifically asked to see them. If I return to that magical place, I think I will probably pick "the other liveaboard". On the way back from the island we had smooth sailing and sunsets and dolphins. Definately life altering. We got off of the boat and was transferred back to the Adventure Inn (which was nice because they really didn’t have to transfer us back to our hotel, seeing as they only pick up at the Marriott Courtyard and the Alta ). The staff at the Adventure Inn was all happy to see us again and treated us great AGAIN….. Not only that, they gave us free transfers to and from the airport included in that price at the top… GREAT PLACE !! If you go to San Jose, make sure you stay there.
This of course is all in my humble opinion,
Was this review helpful? Yes Thank you for giving us your opinion.