During the period 1-9 July, 2006, Kris and I took a trip to Roatan, Honduras, to do some very 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. It was my second visit and Kris' first.

Kris started from Fayetteville and I started from Albuquerque and we were both able to get to Roatan the same day. In fact, we met in Houston and took the same Continental flight to Roatan, arriving in the early afternoon. Mir Ali, an Army buddy of Kris' also came but his plane got delayed and he didn't arrive until Monday night.

The Roatan Airport remains small and somewhat chaotic, AND un-air-conditioned, at least in the ARRIVAL section. Nora, the resort representative, met us and made our processing fast and tolerable. Before long we were en route to the landing and the boat that would take us the 5 to 7 minute ride to CCV. Our luggage did not accompany us and was transported separately. The next time we saw it was in our rooms. We were met and assigned to our accommodations. Kris and I stayed in Playa Miguel, Beach House 11 (Casa Grande), an overflow area for CCV. The bedrooms were air-conditioned. Casa Grande was large and had a small kitchen; it was also the furthest away from CCV, so Kris and I became quite adept at riding bicycles, which were provided free-of-charge by CCV.

CCV was just the same as previously described, except maybe the food wasn't as good and the hot tub was gone. I don't remember the bugs being nearly as bad last time as they were this time. Bug spray was only a temporary deterrent. They were vicious!

Kris and I got in 27 dives during our stay, to include two 5-dive days, 3 night dives and a shark dive. That was a new record for both of us! Because of Mir's late arrival he didn't get in as many dives, yet still doubled his logged dives.

Roatan diving is still characterized by small, but interesting, sea life, with no big pelagics. There were sea horses, spiny lobsters, octopus, squid, morays, Spotted Eagle Rays and an infinite variety of reef fish. I finally saw a pipefish and a toadfish. We also saw many Grey Reef Sharks on the shark dive, which was the best shark dive I have ever done.

The only non-diving activity we did was the canopy tour. There are two of them now - the West End Canopy Tour and the Palmetto Bay Canopy Tour. We took the latter which was allegedly more challenging and found it to be a bust. West End is best! We also toured the settlement of West End, which is little more than restaurants, bars, and gift shops. The main road through town isn't even paved. Some may find that charming; I find that it ranks the town no better than all the other 3rd World towns that I have come to know and avoid.

The weather, which included a few rainbursts, could have been a tad better. Even though diving is the business of getting wet, it did tend to wash particulates into the water and made things murky. Most of the storms were at night and didn't interfere at all with the days activities. Once it did cause the electricity to go out (AND all the air-conditioning). Additionally the water system all depended on electric pumps and they were down too. We couldn't shower. How they managed to put out dinner was a small miracle!

The best kept secrets of CCV, IMHO, still are the dive shop and the photo shop. They were independent businesses but co-located with the resort facilities. Both were really world class operations. I have to also add that our divemaster, Jimmy (Jaime) and his assistant, Dave, were top notch. If you told Jimmy you wanted to see a this or a that, he found them for you! We saw at least one sea horse on just about every dive.

Here are the photos. I will keep them to a bare minimum, since most are repeats of the last trip. I was sorely disappointed in my abilities as a photographer on this trip. I somehow set my camera up incorrectly and everything turned out blurred. All my toadifsh pictures, for instance, didn't turn out at all. Win some - lose some. The only way to get from the photos back to the Roatan page is via your browser's BACK button.

Photos of Coco View Resort, Roatan, Honduras