Trip report CCV 9-16 jan

[Maggy]

I went with a group of 12 divers from the US to Cocoview resort for a week of diving. I brought my non diving husband with me, as he loves to snorkel and I figured he would have a good time at the resort, while we were diving or he could join the boat and snorkel.

Since we live in Sweden it was a long trip for us with an overnight at hotel in Newark and then we continued with DL via Atlanta the day after. Finally we arrived in Roatan and it was raining. Didn't pay much attention to that because it usually rains in shorter periods in tropical places. I just didn't know then how unlucky we were and how much it would rain.

Got settled in a cabana and it was very nice. Loved the overwater patio and the cabana was roomy, clean and everything seemd to work. It continued to rain.

Sunday morning we got a briefing and after that we should do a checkout dive. We were about 30 guests that were there for the first time and that was unusual they say. So the checkout dive was crowded. The visibility was terrible and I almost refused to go down. Divers everywhere but we took the tour of the wall, prince Albert and the reef. It looked like it could have been good if the visiblity had been better.

Well, during the rest of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday it rained. Buckets. They tried to repair the roof in the main house where it rained in, bur fortunately it didn't rain in the cabana. No diving for me during these days and my husband tried to snorkel, but he didn't see much at all.

On Wednesday it started to dry up and we saw the sun. Much better! Today I did an afternoon dive and even if it was way too bad visibility for my taste, I did see a seahorse which was the highlight of the trip.

Me

Thursday was overcast again but only a little rain. Mostly just clowdy. We went to Anthony's Key resort and did the dolphin dive. It was fun and the last 15 minutes of the dive the dolphns really hanged out with all of us and it was great.

Friday was a really nice day, all sunny but very windy with high waves. Went to Mary's place and it was a great dive.

A few pictures around the resort

Last night we had dinner as usual. It was lobster tails and steaks and it was good. After dinner the first a few people starting to feel bad. My husband got stomach pains and we went to bed early. At 2 am I was up the first time throwing up. The morning after (our departure day) my husband was not good but he went to breakfast. I was in bed after throwing up a number of times and and it came both ways so to speak. He found out that several people in our group were sick. At 11 we were forced to leave and I had to move up from bed. I was so weak so I couldn't walk and I was still sick. At the airport they fixed a wheel chair for me and I don't remember much more than I sat in the chair and threw up in plastic bags.

Well, we got to Atlanta too late for our flight to IAD so we decided to stay there during the night, which was a good decision. At 10 pm for the first time I felt strong enough to walk.

We all think that it was the lobstertail that made this. It happened to at least 7 people and it happened fast. But we don't know for sure. It was terrible and I'm still not totally recovered.

This might not have been the best week in my life, but it's still luxury problems if you compare to what some people have to deal with. I will remember the good parts and move on. Might not go back to Roatan. Husband might not go with me on another dive trip.

Friday night it looked like this from our room:

My genreal thought about CCV is that it's nice dive resort. Accommodation is really good, basic but clean and functional, food was a little so so in my taste and I got the impression that most of our group liked the food at Scuba club Cozumel better (where we were in April). Dive boats were great, some of the best I've seen, storage for gear great and crew very friendly. I would think that if you dive several dives every day, I would be tired of cocoview wall and would prefer a 2 tank morning dive from the boat. Now it didn't matter because I didn't dive that much. I'm still a newbie (44 dives) and one of the things I don't deal with so good is bad visibility.

It was cool to watch all the fishes from the dock or the balcony in the shallow water. We saw several eagle rays, green moray, chain moray, porcupine puffer, goldspotted eel and some others as well.

 

[DandyDon]

Sorry to hear about the problems. Rainy season is cheaper, but risky. Win some, lose some I guess. The food illness was very unfortunate tho. This reminds me to pickup some stomach OTC meds as it can happen. Staying over in Roatan until stronger might have been better, but not an option at times.

I had a week kinda like that once, except I got ill on a very tiny & crowded liveaboard after the first day of good diving weather. Luck of the draw at times. :sad:

 

[Maggy]

Sorry to hear about the problems. Rainy season is cheaper, but risky. Win some, lose some I guess. The food illness was very unfortunate tho. This reminds me to pickup some stomach OTC meds as it can happen. Staying over in Roatan until stronger might have been better, but not an option at times.

I had OTC medicins like Immodium but nothing helped in that situation (at least not me, it helped my husband).

My first priority was to get to the US, in case I became more sick and have to go to the hospital. I figured I'd be better off there than in Honduras. If I had traveled without my husband I would probably not have been able to leave at the point.

Regarding the rain, even if this was in the end of rainy season, I believe that this had to do with the unusually cold weather that were in north America at the moment. So I guess we just took the wrong lottery ticket.

 

[robint]

Wow, that is alot of rain. :depressed: Unfortunately, that is why Oct-Jan is called the rainy season in that area.
Were the boats still going out and you decided not to go, or did the boats not even go out those first few days? Did your husband get out and snorkel at all?

The seahorse is really cool. Did you find that on a shore dive? We found seahorses there on both CCV wall and on Newman's wall. It is so exciting finding them on your own rather than having a DM point them out.

We were there in Nov 2008 and it rained quite a bit then too (rainy season). The first few days it rained off and on all day and vis was low at some sites but we found that underwater it didn't really matter. The only thing that was bad was that the sun wasn't out so it was rather dark sometimes. By mid-week we got to do dives with sun and no rain and it was glorious.

I guess the food thing is a matter of taste. I am a bit of a gourmet and I would rather eat "home style food" done well (CCV) than bad attempts at gourmet (ScubaClub Coz). I liked the food at CCV for the most part. I thought the food at SSC was either over-seasoned or under-seasoned or just really badly done. Not every meal was bad at SCC, but enough that I went to bed hungry more than once. I never went hungry at CCV because if I didn't like something I was able to go back to buffet and grab something different. Plus at CCV there was always the salad bar.

As far as the food poisoning, be sure that your group contacts CCV and lets them know about it! Sounds like the lobster was bad, maybe? I am not a big fan of lobster so I rarely eat it as I got sick on it once as a child (on vacation in Florida). Anytime I see it now I think about that, so I can imagine how sick you were! :yuck:
I would hate to be that sick on vacation but luckily it was your last night. (We got sick, Montezuma's revenge, in Cozumel once in the middle of vacation - that was horrible though it only lasted 2 days for me, and only 1 day for my hubby and daughter).

robin

 

[Maggy]

Yep, the boats were going out and some people went. I just don't feel comfortable with murky water and as dark as it was. It scares me. So it was my choice, no shadow on CCV at all. And it was awfully cold when they came up on the boat after, said the others.

My husband snorkeled at least 6-7 times both from the shore and from the boat. It was better in the end of the week, except for Friday when the divers had a good dive, the surface was way to ruff for snorkeling.

The seahorse was found at 40 foot point dive site and it was 4-5 inches and really beautiful.

I guess you are right about the food, it's a matter of taste. Or the quality differed when we were at both places. We didn't go there for the food, so it was no big deal. It was actually just one lunch I couldn't eat anything (except for sallad and crackers and melon).

I'm not sure if anyone in our group contacted CCV and told them. By breakfast it was most likely discovered that many were sick, so there must have been time. I was not aware of anything then:yuck:

 

[robint]

yeah, when it is raining it is definitely colder being on the boat.
We had a couple of people totally unprepared for the weather on our boat. One girl showed up there with only a 3mm shortie wetsuit and it wasn't very good quality to begin with. She was freezing! So she rented a 3mm fullsuit but still got cold because the surface intervals weren't warm. I loaned her a hood which helped somewhat. She said as soon as she got home she was buying a hooded vest to take on dive trips from now on.

As far as the bad weather last week --- yep, just look at the Cozumel Forum. Almost every day there were people posting about how cold and miserable the weather was there. Most days the boats didn't even go out. They had high winds so Harbor Master closed down all diving. Air temp was reported in the 50s and 60s there! Brrrrrr.

 

[ncchuck]

Sorry that your first trip to Roatan left a bad taste. I'd suggest giving it another try picking a different resort in another part of the island at a different time of year. Your husband may have enjoyed Anthony's key for instance or maybe even West End though it would be more difficult to house a group that large in West End.
I don't think there is anything worse than getting sick while on vacation. I've had it happen a couple of times and have seen it many times. It's really bad when several people get sick at the same time. Unfortunately fish and lobster are often left unrefrigerated on tropical islands for long periods of time.
Good report by the way and some nice pics. Thanks.

 

[Maggy]

yeah, when it is raining it is definitely colder being on the boat.
We had a couple of people totally unprepared for the weather on our boat. One girl showed up there with only a 3mm shortie wetsuit and it wasn't very good quality to begin with. She was freezing! So she rented a 3mm fullsuit but still got cold because the surface intervals weren't warm. I loaned her a hood which helped somewhat. She said as soon as she got home she was buying a hooded vest to take on dive trips from now on.

As far as the bad weather last week --- yep, just look at the Cozumel Forum. Almost every day there were people posting about how cold and miserable the weather was there. Most days the boats didn't even go out. They had high winds so Harbor Master closed down all diving. Air temp was reported in the 50s and 60s there! Brrrrrr.

Yeah, must have been the same type of weather. We didn't see any thermometer, but I don't think our temperatures were that low. Maybe 65-70 as lowest. I slept with two blankets (and I even had my husband, lol).

All of us in our group had full wetsuits (I had a 5 mm) and some had a hood and vest also, so I just think it's hard to prepare yourself so much more. It was just one of those weeks. Luckily for the more dedicated divers, our boats were going out. I didn't hear about any cancellations. I just know that many of the drop off dives didn't happen, because nobody was interested.

 

[Maggy]

Sorry that your first trip to Roatan left a bad taste. I'd suggest giving it another try picking a different resort in another part of the island at a different time of year. Your husband may have enjoyed Anthony's key for instance or maybe even West End though it would be more difficult to house a group that large in West End.
I don't think there is anything worse than getting sick while on vacation. I've had it happen a couple of times and have seen it many times. It's really bad when several people get sick at the same time. Unfortunately fish and lobster are often left unrefrigerated on tropical islands for long periods of time.
Good report by the way and some nice pics. Thanks.

Thanks, appreciated that. I was hoping that someone would like some of the pictures. I'm really happy about my seahorse pic. And since English is not my first language it always takes a little longer time to write a report.

 

[castaways01]

Maggy, very nice trip report and great pictures. I thought about you and your dive group during those horrid rainy days. I remembered the early posts about your husband going on the trip and being able to snorkel. Unfortunately, (according to our rain gauge) we got over 20-inches of rain in the first 15 days of January. Its dried up now, but the last 3 days have been very windy... white caps on the southside. I did see a CCV boat go by this morning so guess its not slowing anyone up.

Too bad about the food poisoning. It happens though more than we'd like to think. Bacteria grows quickly in this heat and sometimes seafood sits around unrefrigerated even before the resort buys it. You should write CCV an email about it. They need to hear from everyone in the group who was sick.

I hope you will try Roatan again some day during the more dry season (like Spring/Summer)!