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> Destinations > Honduras > Trip Reports > Trip Report
Roatan is a rugged little island that's green and hilly. There are a
couple small towns, none of which I would consider vital to visit. We
came here for the diving and that's mostly what we did.
We were warned that the bugs were bad in Roatan. We brought both Off
and Jungle Juice which we used most of the time. We all got bit a
little, but it wasn't any worse than a picnic in Chicago in July. Lily
on the other hand was Bug Chow, for some reason she got bit a lot more
than Mark and I combined. Mark thinks it's because she ate bananas and
he read somewhere that insects are attracted to bananas for some
reason.
Getting to/from Roatan
Pain to get there. It took us four planes, two of which were small, to
get to Roatan. We took Continental from Chicago to Houston, then from
Houston to San Pedro Sula, Honduras. From there we took a small TACA
plane to La Ceiba. From the place I could actually see Roatan as we
landed! We had to wait there a while before we took the 15 plane to
Coxen Hole in Roatan.
Fantasy Island
The Fantasy Island Beach Resort is probably the closest thing to a
"Resort" by US standards. Both Coco View and Anthony's Key Resort have
rooms that are wood structures on stilts over the water. Anthony's Key
does have some rooms with windows and air conditioning, but Coco View
has only rooms with screens to keep the bugs out and wood louvers to
keep out the sun and breeze.
The Fantasy Island resort is mostly two story frame buildings. The
main building has the lobby and the main restaurant on the second
floor. The rooms are on either side of the main building. Our first
room was a little worn looking and our phone didn't work most of the
time. We asked to change and the second room was much nicer with a
working phone, TV, ceiling fan and small fridge. The AC worked well
but wasn't needed. By the time we got used to the warm weather, we
turned off the AC and left the screened windows open and the cool
evening breeze was actually nicer.
The food consists of 3 meals/day. We found the food to range from good
to excellent. Breakfast was usually a buffer of hot and cold cereals,
sausage/bacon/ham, pancakes or waffles, some local foods, and an
omlett bar. Lunch was usually ordered from a menu and was either
sandwiches and burgers as well as chicken, beef and seafood dishes.
Dinner was similar to lunch but a bit bigger and a little fancier. The
food choices were mostly different every day but sometimes only
slightly so. One dinner was pretty fancy with some great choices
included an excellent Lobster tail dinner. Yummy.
The dive shop was on the premesis and was very easy to deal with.
Boats left daily at 9am, 11am and 2:30pm. When we were there, the
schedule called for a trip to Mary's Place on Mon, Wed and Fri, plus
night dives on Tue and Thu, if conditions allow. Unfortunately, we
arrived on a Friday and left on a Friday so we only qualified for one
night dive on Tuesday. We didn't get that due to it being cancelled
due to rough conditions. They rescheduled for Wednesday night but that
was cancelled due to rough conditions as well. They also advertise
dives on the north side of the island but we were told they usually
don't do them during the winter due to rough conditions.
When we were there they only ran one dive boat with 6-10 divers at any
time. The sites were all close so the boat returned to the dock after
each dive. The shop also had showers and tubs with fresh water for
rinsing gear as well as a "locker room" for hanging wetsuits and
storing equipment that's locked at night so we didn't have to schlep
our gear to our room every night.
Shore dives were also pretty simple. We did 4 night shore dives from
the gazebo. They left us tanks, including one extra, at the gazebo
then picked up the used tanks in the morning.
The Diving
The diving around Roatan is excellent! Most of the diving we did was
on the south shore of the island. Fantasy Island normally offers dives
on the north shore but we were told conditions there didn't allow it.
Please consult my dive log for dives 49 thru 66 for details of each
dive in Roatan. I have all 17 of my dives in Roatan logged, all with
at least some pictures and several will eventually contain some
streaming video of the dive!
Almost all the dives were boat dives to one of the reefs in the area.
Most of the reefs are rather shallow, usually 15' to 40' deep before
the wall dropoff. The wall then drops down to 100'+. Many of the
sites had crevasses and swimthroughs that made the dives more
interesting.
We also did some night dives on our own. We did four of these to the
DC-3 plane sunk in about 40' of water and the Prince Albert island
freighter in around 60' of water. This made for a pretty good night
dive as there are lots of critters around that normally hide in either
the wrecks or the reefs nearby. Visibility usually was rather poor
especially near the gazebo.
The animal life in Roatan is very similar to other places in the
Carribean. The only other Carribean island I dove was Cozumel so
that's all I can compare it to. There seemed to be less fish in
general in Roatan than Cozumel. Although some sites did have an
abundance, others seemed pretty sparse. The coral is quite a bit
better than Cozumel, especially soft corals. I've never seen such
large colonies before.
Driving Around Roatan
Our last day before flying back we rented a car to drive around the
island. We checked out the other major resorts on the island, visited
the West End and checked out downtown Coxen Hole.
We also drove quite a way to the east side of the island. The scenery
was stunning but there wasn't much to do there. Mark took a lot of
pictures here so I'll put some of those on-line as soon as he gets me
copies. We tried to drive to Coco View to check it out but we found
there is no way to get there by car. We went back to Fantasy Island
and used kayaks to get there!
Thanks to Gregory for this trip report ...
January 2000
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