Trip Report Trip Report: Alton's Dive Center, Utila. Late May 2019

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

DC3DFF4C-6CDF-4B5F-9B4F-691D7F4F16E5.jpeg
If you're looking for Romance and privacy its hard to beat this place on Utila:- www.facebook.com/utilabeach Not close to restaurants per se (need a water taxi) but a cook is available to prepare dinners.

And if you are looking for a more full service experience Utopia Village would also be an excellent option. It is a small intimate resort with great service and lots of small personalized touches to help make a anniversary or celebration even more special. There some reviews on Scuba board and many on TripAdvisor that comment on this.

Both of these options would be a better fit for something more private and romantic in my opinion. Both or more remote and quiet on the south shore. The downside is that for people that prefer easy access to town and its amenities it is a little harder.
 

Attachments

  • DE1466D5-98C7-4B0D-A988-122CACAE9A6B.jpeg
    DE1466D5-98C7-4B0D-A988-122CACAE9A6B.jpeg
    65.8 KB · Views: 119
Dear Ironborn. I am the owner of Utopia Village and wanted to apologize to you for your experience trying to book with us. After reading your excellent trip report, I was disappointed to learn about your experience with the bookings process. I followed up with our bookings person and reviewed the email exchange and as a minimum we did a poor job of communicating the reason to you (for first saying there was availability and then coming back a short while later saying we would no longer be open that week). I am happy that you still came to Utila and had a great trip. And your Trip Report is an excellent summary of Utila and the diving here. If you ever decide to come to Utila again, and want to give us another try we will give you a special deal to try to make up in a small way for your first experience, Once again please accept my sincere apologies for a less than stellar first interaction/impression with us.

That is the short answer. Below is some additional context of what happened if you are interested. I provide this only because you indicated the decision to close a week caused you some concern. We are a small dive resort that takes a maximum of 16 guests each week (even though the resort has 40 beds). We are only open between 26-30 weeks a year. We do these two things so we can deliver a very high level of service to our guests and so that ourselves and our team remain fresh and enthusiastic every week with guests. Mid February to Mid May 2019 was a very busy time for us and we had full houses or close to full houses every week. And June was shaping up to be similar. We were scheduled to be closed for 1 week in Mid May to allow us to recharge and also to take care of some routine maintenance activities. And we had a tentative dive group already schedule for the last week of May (the week you were interested in). Because we had that dive group penciled in we had been turning down all other enquiries for that week (assuming it was full with the dive group). When the dive groups plan changed shortly before your enquiry our bookings person assumed the week would become available for other bookings and hence she responded to you that there was great availability for that week. But we (the owners) had decided to close that week too to have a two week break between two very busy periods. We messed up in 3 ways: (1) myself and the bookings person should have been better aligned before we responded to you that we had availability (2) she could have done a better job explaining to you what had happened and why she gave you 2 different answers about availability 6 hours apart (she had checked with us in between if she could accept your booking). Or could have first checked and then got back to you. (3) and lastly if we had known that you had already booked flights for that week based on our indication that there was availability we would have either opened for you to honor our commitment or offered you a discount equal to the costs of changing your flights. But we didn’t hear back from you for a week or so and by that time it was too late. We will try to do better next time.

@UtopiaOnUtila Thank you for the clarification. I will follow up with you further via private messages.

Beyond the specifics of my case, I think it would be good for prospective guests in general to have clearer insight into your resort's schedule. Specifically, it might be worth including a calendar on your website, so that prospective guests can know what weeks the resort will be closed and thus save everyone some time, rather than having inquire via email to find out that the resort is closed for a given week. Also, how far in advance do you usually decide to close the resort for a given week?
 
Hi,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write these trip reports - they're amazingly detailed and so helpful.

I'm currently researching the Bay Islands as a location to do my dive master internship and wondered if you might be able to give me your view on a few questions? If this is the wrong place and I should post elsewhere on a new thread please do let me know.

Location: Roantan or Utilia

From what you've said on both reports it sounds like the dive sites are slightly better on Utilia. Do you think they have the kind of variety you'd want to improve all skills on a dive master course?

I'm quite a laid back person in my 30's who's fairly fond of an early night so am looking for somewhere friendly rather than loud drunken parties every might. Sounds like you had that at Alton but did you have the impression that was unique to that dive centre?

Cost of course:

This seems to vary significantly between different centres - without it always being clear what's included. I'm looking for quality so am not too concerned about the cost, but equally don't want to just pay for the most expensive on the assumption it'll be the best.
$1200 at Alton
$2000 including lodging at Coco view
$650 at Underwater Vision

Duration course:

The duration also seems to vary significantly - with some places offering it in as little as two weeks and many suggesting a month. Speaking to others and reading the forum 'longer the better' seems to be the advice. Do you think somewhere like Coco who suggest a month would be comfortable extending ths to two months?

Protests in June 2019:

I'm not usually one to be overly concerned about safety - a little common sense goes a long way in my experience! But as I'll be a female traveling alone wondered what kind of vibe you got, and if you'd heard if it had changed at all following the protests in June?

Thanks for your help
 
there are no protests on the island. without the internet or tv we wouldn't even have been aware anything was going on. however they did create some delays and cuts in bus service between la ceiba and san pride sula on the mainland. although that seems to no longer be a problem
 
Hi,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write these trip reports - they're amazingly detailed and so helpful.

I'm currently researching the Bay Islands as a location to do my dive master internship and wondered if you might be able to give me your view on a few questions? If this is the wrong place and I should post elsewhere on a new thread please do let me know.

Location: Roantan or Utilia

From what you've said on both reports it sounds like the dive sites are slightly better on Utilia. Do you think they have the kind of variety you'd want to improve all skills on a dive master course?

I'm quite a laid back person in my 30's who's fairly fond of an early night so am looking for somewhere friendly rather than loud drunken parties every might. Sounds like you had that at Alton but did you have the impression that was unique to that dive centre?

Cost of course:

This seems to vary significantly between different centres - without it always being clear what's included. I'm looking for quality so am not too concerned about the cost, but equally don't want to just pay for the most expensive on the assumption it'll be the best.
$1200 at Alton
$2000 including lodging at Coco view
$650 at Underwater Vision

Duration course:

The duration also seems to vary significantly - with some places offering it in as little as two weeks and many suggesting a month. Speaking to others and reading the forum 'longer the better' seems to be the advice. Do you think somewhere like Coco who suggest a month would be comfortable extending ths to two months?

Protests in June 2019:

I'm not usually one to be overly concerned about safety - a little common sense goes a long way in my experience! But as I'll be a female traveling alone wondered what kind of vibe you got, and if you'd heard if it had changed at all following the protests in June?

Thanks for your help

@GeorginaM

Between Roatan and Utila, the latter clearly seems to be a more common/popular place to do one's divemaster training. From what I have heard/read, cost seems to be a major factor in that preference. I cannot claim to know which would be better, but I have heard that some dive operations around the world may have a lower opinion of (and would thus be less likely to hire) dive professionals that trained at Utila dive shops due to the high volume of trainees that come out of the dive shops there. I will say, however, that I personally found the Alton's DMs to be highly capable, skilled, and professional, and I cannot imagine that anyone who has seen them in action would have any reservations about hiring them.

I think that the diving in Utila is somewhat better than that of Roatan for its ease/comfort and its aesthetic qualities. I think that it also makes a good place for beginning divers and for training because the diving conditions are relatively easy. But if you want to train in places with more challenging conditions or more diverse environments, you might be better off elsewhere. The answer to your question also depends on what you are looking for in your training environment. For example, if you want to train for deep diving or tech diving, Utila would probably not be the right choice, as it is quite shallow there. If you want to train for drift diving, you might be better off elsewhere, as currents were negligible, except at one site. But if you want to train in an easy environment that allows you to focus on whatever skills you are practicing, rather than the environment, Utila would work nicely.

The atmosphere at Alton's would probably be a good fit for what you are looking for: friendly and sociable, but without loud, drunken, and raucous revelry. I did not visit any other dive centers and thus cannot comment on the atmosphere there, although I did see some lively happy hour festivities as I passed by on the way to other places.
 
I did my dive master training at UDC (utila dive center) and was very happy with the training I received.
 
@GeorginaM

For example, if you want to train for deep diving or tech diving, Utila would probably not be the right choice, as it is quite shallow there. If you want to train for drift diving, you might be better off elsewhere, as currents were negligible, except at one site.


Funny you said that, well kinda. Utila dive center offers all the way through tri-mix training. How shallow can it be, to obtain full tri-mix cert?
 
@GeorginaM is misinformed, there are some very deep walls around Utila' northside, some that go down hundreds of feet. Deep tri-mix divers have no problems finding deep dives and I often spot them far below me, making their way up walls when I'm at my regular scuba depth threshold.
 
there are no protests on the island. without the internet or tv we wouldn't even have been aware anything was going on. however they did create some delays and cuts in bus service between la ceiba and san pride sula on the mainland. although that seems to no longer be a problem

Thanks that's really reassuring!
 
@GeorginaM

Between Roatan and Utila, the latter clearly seems to be a more common/popular place to do one's divemaster training. From what I have heard/read, cost seems to be a major factor in that preference. I cannot claim to know which would be better, but I have heard that some dive operations around the world may have a lower opinion of (and would thus be less likely to hire) dive professionals that trained at Utila dive shops due to the high volume of trainees that come out of the dive shops there. I will say, however, that I personally found the Alton's DMs to be highly capable, skilled, and professional, and I cannot imagine that anyone who has seen them in action would have any reservations about hiring them.

I think that the diving in Utila is somewhat better than that of Roatan for its ease/comfort and its aesthetic qualities. I think that it also makes a good place for beginning divers and for training because the diving conditions are relatively easy. But if you want to train in places with more challenging conditions or more diverse environments, you might be better off elsewhere. The answer to your question also depends on what you are looking for in your training environment. For example, if you want to train for deep diving or tech diving, Utila would probably not be the right choice, as it is quite shallow there. If you want to train for drift diving, you might be better off elsewhere, as currents were negligible, except at one site. But if you want to train in an easy environment that allows you to focus on whatever skills you are practicing, rather than the environment, Utila would work nicely.

The atmosphere at Alton's would probably be a good fit for what you are looking for: friendly and sociable, but without loud, drunken, and raucous revelry. I did not visit any other dive centers and thus cannot comment on the atmosphere there, although I did see some lively happy hour festivities as I passed by on the way to other places.

Thank you - really helpful to get your thoughts
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom