Sounds great. Welcome. Where did you stay and dive in Roatan?
Thanks for the welcome. We stayed on West Bay with Bananarama. Bananarama is nothing fancy at all; a little rustic and super casual. And with $2 local/Honduran beer. Perfect for us since we're not "resort/touristy" people. We really like the dive shop team too. That said - I've heard lots of good things about the other dive shops on the island and nothing really bad about any. Most seem to have a pretty loyal following. Cruise ships weren't a really a factor during either of our trips. So that also was nice for us, but not so much for the locals who could use the tourism money. There were a few COVID-related protocols to follow, but no issues there.
To be honest, I can't imagine a much better first diving experience. We're old school enough that we read the hard copy of the OW manual ahead of time and then reviewed all the exercises and tested in person with the DI. It was actually less expensive overall that way, and it let us build up some rapport with the DI from the start. Our confined dives were nice warm shore dives in a sandy area beside the reef with just the three of us. Much better than in a swimming pool here in the Des Moines area.
After getting certified and on our 2nd trip in Sept., all the boat dive groups were very small and relaxed. Perfect for us to fine tune buoyancy skills, etc. And worst case, had we really not liked diving, we'd have been perfectly fine chilling on the beach and snorkeling the reef.
FWIW - Bananarama has dive and stay specials at a couple of the low season spots during the year. $50/night (base rate) and less than $30/tank (not including tips & depending on # of dives). Right now, airlines have some decent deals going depending on the travel date. I just booked RT on AA for 20,000 pts (+taxes). AA Advantage's current credit card offer is for 60,000 points with no spending requirement outside of "any" purchase and $99 annual fee... A year ago, I'd have honestly laughed if someone would have told me I'd be making two trips to Honduras in a matter of months. And one, if not two trips this year. As I'm sure many of you know, it's definitely a developing country in many regards, and there are some risks/challenges associated with that. But we had the best experiences with all the people we met down there.
