Diving in Roatan

(Folks, sorry this post and the next two are kinda late. I've heard clamor for more on Roatan and you can't have clamor causing commotion. The internet connection in Roatan was super sucky, and pricey to boot. Posts will be arriving more regularly now that we're in Buenos Aires.)

Roatan is one of the Bay Islands, found off the coast of Honduras. The other two islands are Utila and Guanaja. I don’t know anything about the latter island, but the former is a popular destination with scuba divers. Apparently, Utila is all about diving, and little else. There isn’t a beach there, and really nothing to do besides diving, so we marked Roatan as our destination. Plus, we got an excellent recommendation for a place to stay in Roatan from our friends David and Michele.

There isn’t much to do on Roatan either if you aren’t diving, so Jen has found herself deep in research for her young adult novel. Her research consists of two Judy Blume books and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. (Imagine if that book was written for young boys…would it be The Brotherhood of the Stolen Baseball Mitt or the Itchy Jockstrap? Just wondering….)

Meanwhile, I set off in search of a dive shop. Roatan is also known as an excellent place to become a certified diver, but unlike Utila it has a few more things to do. In fact, there is a small beach right across from our hotel and Jen managed to get herself nice and toasted on the first day.

Anyhow, I settled on the dive shop right next door to our hotel, Native Sons. While owned by a local couple, it was Andrea the dive instructor, a German ex-pat, who charmed me into going with them. Andrea is a phenomenal instructor and very talented diver. (Note her beautiful smile and ubiquitous Belmont cigarette.) It’s the low season right now, so I wound up getting one-on-one instruction to get my PADI Open Water Diver certification.

Let me take this paragraph to address my old buddy Scott and talk about the diving course. Scott had strongly suggested I get certified in the San Francisco area, before going on this trip. He had his reasons, and while Scott is rarely wrong (especially when it comes to baseball) he couldn’t be more wrong on this account. Roatan is an excellent place to get certified. The cost is comparatively quite low, confined instructional dives are conducted in warm Caribbean water, and all the open water dives are on one of the best reefs in the world. The reef here is truly unspoiled, with spectacular coral and wildlife. Plus, the whole course took less than three days. Sorry Scott, but I can’t see pool dives, cold Monterey Bay water, and much higher costs topping this place. See the picture of me after a dive as happy as a pig in shit.


The course involved videos (boring), a textbook (highly informative, but marginally boring and oddly corny), and diving. Plus, there was a final written exam that I found a way to pass. Suffice to say, I enjoyed it so much I also went on to get my Advanced Open Water certification. In the next post, I’ll write a little more about the dives and the people we’ve met.