May of last year I went to Belize to dive. When there I was told by my divemaster that as much as she liked Belize, Roatan was a better place to dive. However, she told me, there were TWO disadvantages to Roatan. One...it's harder to get to. Two...very little English is spoken there. If you didn't feel completely comfortable in Spanish it would be difficult. Well, I'm comfortable in Spanish and felt like adventure. So off I went...
Getting to Roatan is very easy. Clearly no harder than getting to Belize. TACA goes right there for about $200 less than to Belize. On the island most everyone speaks English, in fact I was lead to believe that English is used almost as a point of pride...Mainlanders speak Spanish, islanders are Caribbean, different and speak English. So it would seem that on those two points my information was less than totally accurate.
However, as a great dive location...she was right on the mark.
October is low season for Roatan (high season being Christmas - Easter and June/July). I was, in fact, the only person at Sueno del Mar hotel all week, and it seemed to me that for the most part there were only 20 or so tourists/divers on the island until the weekend. I had a beautiful room overlooking the Caribbean and was right above the dive shop, which was completely equipped. Only thing I didn't see there was Nitrox (which I didn't need).
On my first day out I met Willy, who would be my private divemaster for the week as I was the only diver in the hotel. Our first dive was the usual shakedown, "does this guy REALLY know what he's doing?" checkout dive. I can't speak highly enough of Willy. We were a perfect match. He was the most knowledgeable divemaster I've ever dove with when it comes to information about the life we would see. He was slow, careful and found a lot of interesting things to see that I would have missed. He allowed me to wonder off with my camera, or play with some scene I'd like to shoot whenever I wanted to. I never felt rushed or that he had his itinerary for the dive. He quickly understood my comfort level. We fit like a glove. And for the first 12 dives that week I had him all to myself. What luck! As I got to know more about him it turns out he's dove all over the world and has worked for and shot video for both Jacques Cousteau and the Nature Planet. One of his interests in diving is the sandy bottom environment. At first I was a little surprised. What's there? Well he showed me, and they became some of my favorite dives.
I would argue that the diving in Belize was a bit more spectacular, but in Belize every dive was the same dive in a different location. In Roatan I dove walls, caverns, valleys, ship wrecks, sandy bottoms, coral, shallow reefs, deep dives and drift dives. We found the largest moray's I've seen, my first sea horse, turtles, barracudas, lobsters, eels, all the usual "pretty fish" and corals. Every day something new and impressive.
And all this at half the price I would have paid in Belize...All high marks in my book.
The city of West End also was a great place to hang out. A nice Caribbean town, clean, lots of restaurants, not filled with big, glitzy developments. All and all a great week. One I'll repeat. |
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