Cocos Island is one of the treasures of the planet. The famous Jacques Cousteau called this Costa Rica island the most beautiful island he had ever explored, Costa Ricans have declared this little national park one of its Seven Wonders, and it is being considered as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

The island is some 340 miles off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Though it is a very small island, only about nine square miles, its fame today comes from its underwater treasure. It is one of the truly great places in the world for scuba diving, considered by some to be the best place in the world for large marine animal viewing. The island sometimes has so many sharks around it that it has been known as Shark Island. There are an incredible number of species of tuna, rays, sharks, and other fish, as well as sea turtles, porpoises, and whales. Hammerhead sharks are common and some of the largest Hammerheads ever reported were seen off this island.

The island has long been famous for pirates, real and imagined. Some people think that it served as inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson’s famous adventure 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.

It also fired the imagination of Michael Crichton whose world famous Jurassic Park is set off the coast of Costa Rica.

The island is uninhabited except for a few Costa Rica park rangers who are stationed there to protect its waters from poaching. For centuries its isolation protected the island’s rainforest and undersea creatures 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.

Without a doubt, Costa Rica is a beautiful, spectacular country and a premier tourist destination. Most people, though, have never heard of its natural gem, Corcovado National Park. This teeny park covers only 100,000 acres (about 42,000 hectares) of the Osa Peninsula, situated along the south Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and protects eight unique habitats. It is unlike almost anywhere else on the planet and the largest remaining primary forest in Central America.

In 1502, Christopher Columbus explored the Americas along the Caribbean from Mexico south to a land he called Costa Rica, the rich coast (you may have heard the name!). Spectacular, verdant tropical forests covered the lands from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Wildlife was incredibly abundant back then. Indeed, there were so many sea turtles that mariners, lost in the fog, relied upon the sounds of tens of thousands of them paddling towards nesting beaches to find land. The passing of five centuries has been unkind to both the forests and animals and today most of the primary forests from Mexico to South America have been cut down or burned. Fortunately, Costa Rica showed good sense and preserved Corcovado.

Columbus never saw Corcovado. The first Western explorer to see it was Sir Frances Drake (remember him? The sea captain who destroyed the Spanish Armada in 1588 and saved England from Spain) who landed just north of the Osa Peninsula in a beautiful place now named after him: Drake Bay. The bay serves as the gateway to Corcovado.

Do not be misled by the tiny size of this gem. Though it is less than 160 square miles in size (your daily commute is probably larger) this national park protects has been described by National Geographic as ‘the most biologically intense place’ on the planet. There are 400 species of birds in an area only about 20 miles long and 8 miles wide. How intense is this? Consider. The continental United States—48 States—has 900 or so different species. The largest remaining population of magnificent Scarlet Macaws in Central America lives there, some 1000. Visitors are regularly able to watch these birds in flight or feeding near the shoreline. The mangrove swamps, montane forest and jolillo palms of Corcovado provide a home for 139 different species of mammal and 116 species of amphibian and reptile. The mammals (including six species of wild cats) represent a 10th of the species of mammals still alive in the Americas and are supported on only 0.000101777% of the landmass.

If you like frogs (and who does not?) then visiting this national park will be a rare treat. There are species of poison-arrow, glass, and re-eyed tree frogs which make this park their home. It is one of just a couple of places in Costa Rica to find squirrel monkeys, and visitors are able to watch fishing bats fish the rivers of the reserve at night. At one time you could also find the harpy eagle in Corcovado, however, it has not been see for a number of years and is believed to be extinct in the area.

The seemingly deserted beaches of the park provide a nesting ground for four species of sea turtle and because of the large tapir population jaguars and crocodiles also inhabit this area. They prefer to hunt around the edges of the Corcovado Lagoon and are often sighted. The footprints of this large carnivorous cat are often found in the mud trails which surround the lagoon.

This is rainforest so expect precipitation, lots of it—200 inches or more a year. The trees, incredible in their diversity, are as tall as any found in the Amazon, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and it is easy to see why the park is often referred to as the Amazon of Costa Rica. The best time to visit is in the dry months from January to April as the park is inundated by torrential rains from April to December.