noj3333
Contributor
My wife and I were on a Carnival Cruise in during the first half of February 2016, with ports of call in Coata Maya, Roatan, Belize City, and Cozumel. For this review, I’ll be talking about our dives in Roatan with Barfoot Divers.
Whenever we take a cruise my number one priority is always to try NOT to dive with the cruise ship operator. I often avoid the cruise ship operator for several reasons, and when I’m forced to use them I often see the difference and regret using them. This feeling always leads me on a search to find an operator that meets our needs, and sometimes it’s a bit of a crap-shoot… this experience was no different. Barefoot Divers had little information (besides tripadvisor reviews) so I thought I’d help future divers out and add some commentary into the mix.
Getting off the ship and to the taxi stand is a bit of a hassle (seeing how we travel with 2 full sets of equipment), this port is similar to almost all cruise ports in this regard. It’s maybe a 10-15 minute walk. We travel with all our gear, so like I said earlier, this walk isn’t exactly fun. Once you get to the cab stand inside the cruise shopping area you can grab one of a dozen cabs to the dive shop. It’s a VERY short ride (5-8 minutes) but they hit us up for $20 each way… I wasn’t happy about this, and you can walk a little further, up over a small hill, and catch a ‘non-approved taxi’ for $10. IMO the only thing between the two taxis is the ‘non-approved taxi’ doesn’t pay a fee to enter the port area, where the ‘approved-taxi’ does. If we didn’t have our gear we would have used the taxi outside the fence line, but I didn’t feel like dragging my gear up the small hill… so we ate the $20 difference.
Once we go to the dive shop we were greeted by the staff. Everyone was super friendly, this is a resort, with an attached dive shop. They have a few boats (maybe 4 if my memory serves me right). Right as we were checking in some of the resort guests were heading out (they were on a nice sized boat, and they looked to have plenty of room to suit up… definitely not crammed together). They don’t mix cruise guests with resort guests so we were lucky that on that day we were the only cruise ship guests that booked with them… a private boat/ captain and dive guide for us!!!
Our captain and DM Pedro were setting up. The took our gear and started setting it up on our tanks (which they offer both AL80’s and AL100’s). Not knowing the staff, I always recheck everything, and as far as I was concerned, it was all set up properly and OK (as one would expect). We dove three different sites (Mary’s Place, French Key Cut, Mr. John), and all of them were great. Depths of 72’, 65’, and 51’, warm water, good viz, plenty of fish, and AMAZING coral. Following our last dive, the crew was more than willing to break our gear down and rinse everything. They have a great rinse station (with ‘sink the stink’ in the water for wetsuits), and a sunny area with a metal rod with you can hang your bc and wetsuit (no need to drag wet gear back with you to the cruise ship!!!).
This coming June my wife and I will be doing 2 weeks in Roatan, so we asked if we could look at the resort (we have 1 week where we could possibly stay somewhere besides Anthony’s Key). The rooms at Barefoot were BEAUTIFUL! Gorgeous showers, very nice kitchens, clean linen, Apple TV, A/C, ect. They also have a nice pool, and restaurant area. If we can swing the moderate price difference, we’ll be spending our second week at Barefoot… it was really that nice. EDIT… we just were billed for two weeks at AKR, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to pursue staying at Barefoot… for this trip.
All and all I was VERY happy with Barefoot divers. This is a great option for cruise ship guests, and I couldn’t imagine anything would be different if you were a guest for a week at the resort. This was our first experience diving Roatan, and I think my wife and I agree, it was one of our favorite Caribbean locations.
Oh, and one last thing… if you dive here REQUEST PEDRO for a DM!! He was great, very informative, knowledgeable, and friendly. He also speaks amazing English for a non-native speaker. He was great, and I imagine was part of the reason why we had such great dives!
Whenever we take a cruise my number one priority is always to try NOT to dive with the cruise ship operator. I often avoid the cruise ship operator for several reasons, and when I’m forced to use them I often see the difference and regret using them. This feeling always leads me on a search to find an operator that meets our needs, and sometimes it’s a bit of a crap-shoot… this experience was no different. Barefoot Divers had little information (besides tripadvisor reviews) so I thought I’d help future divers out and add some commentary into the mix.
Getting off the ship and to the taxi stand is a bit of a hassle (seeing how we travel with 2 full sets of equipment), this port is similar to almost all cruise ports in this regard. It’s maybe a 10-15 minute walk. We travel with all our gear, so like I said earlier, this walk isn’t exactly fun. Once you get to the cab stand inside the cruise shopping area you can grab one of a dozen cabs to the dive shop. It’s a VERY short ride (5-8 minutes) but they hit us up for $20 each way… I wasn’t happy about this, and you can walk a little further, up over a small hill, and catch a ‘non-approved taxi’ for $10. IMO the only thing between the two taxis is the ‘non-approved taxi’ doesn’t pay a fee to enter the port area, where the ‘approved-taxi’ does. If we didn’t have our gear we would have used the taxi outside the fence line, but I didn’t feel like dragging my gear up the small hill… so we ate the $20 difference.
Once we go to the dive shop we were greeted by the staff. Everyone was super friendly, this is a resort, with an attached dive shop. They have a few boats (maybe 4 if my memory serves me right). Right as we were checking in some of the resort guests were heading out (they were on a nice sized boat, and they looked to have plenty of room to suit up… definitely not crammed together). They don’t mix cruise guests with resort guests so we were lucky that on that day we were the only cruise ship guests that booked with them… a private boat/ captain and dive guide for us!!!
Our captain and DM Pedro were setting up. The took our gear and started setting it up on our tanks (which they offer both AL80’s and AL100’s). Not knowing the staff, I always recheck everything, and as far as I was concerned, it was all set up properly and OK (as one would expect). We dove three different sites (Mary’s Place, French Key Cut, Mr. John), and all of them were great. Depths of 72’, 65’, and 51’, warm water, good viz, plenty of fish, and AMAZING coral. Following our last dive, the crew was more than willing to break our gear down and rinse everything. They have a great rinse station (with ‘sink the stink’ in the water for wetsuits), and a sunny area with a metal rod with you can hang your bc and wetsuit (no need to drag wet gear back with you to the cruise ship!!!).
This coming June my wife and I will be doing 2 weeks in Roatan, so we asked if we could look at the resort (we have 1 week where we could possibly stay somewhere besides Anthony’s Key). The rooms at Barefoot were BEAUTIFUL! Gorgeous showers, very nice kitchens, clean linen, Apple TV, A/C, ect. They also have a nice pool, and restaurant area. If we can swing the moderate price difference, we’ll be spending our second week at Barefoot… it was really that nice. EDIT… we just were billed for two weeks at AKR, so unfortunately, we won’t be able to pursue staying at Barefoot… for this trip.
All and all I was VERY happy with Barefoot divers. This is a great option for cruise ship guests, and I couldn’t imagine anything would be different if you were a guest for a week at the resort. This was our first experience diving Roatan, and I think my wife and I agree, it was one of our favorite Caribbean locations.
Oh, and one last thing… if you dive here REQUEST PEDRO for a DM!! He was great, very informative, knowledgeable, and friendly. He also speaks amazing English for a non-native speaker. He was great, and I imagine was part of the reason why we had such great dives!
