During the period 11-18 December, 2004, Karen and I took a trip to Roatan, Honduras, to do some serious SCUBA-diving. Roatan is one of the three Bay Islands off the northern Honduran coast (the other two islands being Utila and Guanaja). We stayed at the Coco View Resort (CCV) which claims the record as the Caribbean resort that does the most repeat business.

Going there we had to overnight in Houston as our Continental flight to Roatan left too early to connect with a flight from Albuquerque arriving the same day. We stayed at the airport Marriott and found it to be reasonably priced and more than adequate. We did not realize, however, that the airport train serviced the hotel, as well as all the other terminals, and ended up dragging our bags with us as we walked to the hotel lobby. Although we got to the terminal 2 hrs before the Roatan flight the next day it was not early enough and the lines were horrendous. But we made it.

The Roatan Airport was small and chaotic, but the resort representative who met us made our processing fast and easy. Before long we were en route to the landing and the boat that would take us the 8 to 10 minute ride to CCV. Our luggage did not accompany us and was transported separately. The next time we saw it was in our rooms. I recall the first day as being a little harried as, after an initial orientation, they wanted to get us into the water and familiar with their fantastic shore diving area - their "Front Yard," as it is called. Because it was getting on the the shank of the day we had to rush to our rooms, hurriedly unpack our stuff to get to our gear, change into a swimming suit, etc, etc. After that things calmed down.

There are good reasons why CCV does a lot of repeat business. The accommodations are more than adequate. The food is good. The atmosphere is laid back and friendly. The dive operations are well-oganized and run like clockwork. The dive facilities are outstanding! Each of the four dive boats has its own garage with dive lockers, benches and tables enough for all. There are showers and drying racks for equipment. It has many dunk tanks, both for camera equipment and dive gear. I think that, best of all, were the resort personnel - management, front office staff, kitchen staff, room staff, maintenance staff and dive staff - they were all GREAT!

A typical dive day, if you were a diving animal (we weren't), might go like this: get up early and do an early morning shore dive, breakfast, a morning boat dive, then a drop-off dive on the way back, lunch, an afternoon boat dive, then another drop-off dive, dinner, and then a night dive from shore. A drop-off dive is one that started from the boat, which would drop you off on one of the two walls in their Front Yard, and a leisurely swim in, culminating in a shore recovery. The boat dives were all guided by the great CCV divemasters. You were on your own for the shore dives and drop-off dives. There were a fair number of intentionally sunk wrecks at Roatan to gather and concentrate sea life. This includes the Prince Albert and some aircraft debris in CCV's Front Yard.

Roatan diving was characterized by small, but interesting, sea life, with no big pelagics (although this might be a seasonal thing). There were sea horses, spiney lobsters, octopus, squid, morays and an infinite variety of reef fish, but I was quite taken with the sponges and coral formations. My photos should demonstrate that point.

There are some non-diving activities on Roatan although none of these were physically at the CCV resort. You had to take the boat to Roatan and then a bus/van to the activity site. Karen and I did the canopy tour, which involved climbing into harnesses, hooking on to cables in treetop platforms, and then zipping from platform to platform through the jungle tree canopies on those cables. You start at the top of a mountain and end up at the bottom. It was really a hoot. There were other Roatan tours that we didn't take, so I can't describe them other than to mention they were available. There was a iguana farm tour, a shopping tour in West End, and maybe some nice vista areas. Oh yes, there was a "Swim with the Dolphin" event at Anthony's Caye Resort. Maybe in the future such dolphin things will appeal to me - they're supposed to be almost miraculous. Right now I consider them over-priced petting zoos-like encounters...but then I've never done it. There was only one organized evening activity at CCV - some of the local school children danced for us - which was nice. Oh yes, one night there was a Christmas Party for the CCV staff. Additionally, vendors came by during the day to sell shell things, carved things, and woven things that never really caught my eye.

The weather, which included rain, could have been a tad better. Even though diving is the business of getting wet, it got pretty wearisome when the dives were over and you were in your "dry" clothes attempting to dodge raindrops. Additionally, heavy rain washed particulate matter into the water and really affected shore dive visibility. The visibility of the boat dives was only marginally degraded. But then it WAS the rainy season, so the weather was only doing what it was supposed to do.

The best kept secrets of CCV, IMHO, were the dive shop and the photo shop. They were independent businesses but co-located with the resort facilities. Both were really world class operations. The photo classes offered and conducted by Tim Blanton, the resident photo pro, were absolutely unparalleled. The free bouyancy class offered by the dive shop prior to the Mary's Place dive (one of Roatan's signature dives) was excellent. I thought I knew a thing or two about bouyancy control, but learned so much from that expert class. They offered many other typical diving classes as well. They sold unique little nice-to-have-in-your-dive-bag stuff and what they didn't sell they gave away.

Here are the photos. There are photos of Coco View Resort itself and then of the underwater flora and fauna of the Roatan dive sites. BTW, click on the thumbnail to see the larger photo. You can navigate through the photos on the thumbnails or the large photo pages, however, you can only navigate back to the "Roatan Trip" page or to the other photo page from the thumbnail page.

Photos of Coco View Resort, Roatan, Honduras
Photos of Roatan Sea Life