Enjoyed two weeks in West End back in May. Not the best time to be there with lots of heat and bugs with voracious appetites, but still one of my best trips ever.
Dove with Native Sons right in the center of West End and they were fantastic. Georgia, Tony, Maxine, and John were all very helpful and devoted to see that their groups had a good time and saw nice things.
Did 11 dives including one night dive that had to be the most fantastic night experience ever for me. Saw the standard lobsters, octapus and the like that I have seen at other Caribbean locations but saw something uniquely different here. The phosperessence was spectacular!! Saw "strings of pearls" which are little "strings" of lights that appear vertically one by one until the whole area around you appears as a village decorated for Christmas. I have never seen or heard of anything like that anywhere else and it was worth the visit.
Saw many sea turtles, eagle rays, morays and the like and only returned to the same place once in the 11 dives. Only saw a couple shark on the whole trip and that was fine with me. Been there, done that. Saw few really large fish, but lots of colorful small ones on some of the shallower areas that was really worth the experience. The hard corals were non-spectacular, but the soft corals were some of the most beautiful and prolific that I have ever seen. Black coral is plentiful in several spots I visited and overall, visibility was great. Most of my dives it was around 80' and on the poorest of them was around 50'. To an Arkansas boy who spearfishes with vis of 6' that wasn't half bad.
We stayed at the Seagrape Plantation and walked all over West End during our visit. There is no good beach at West End, but a 10 minute water taxi ride to West Bay finds one of the finest beaches anywhere in the world. There you can wade out to the reef and view all kinds of pretty reef fishes with just your mask and snorkle. Seagrape's new motel-like buildings were very comfortable, and the air conditioning in them was great. Their little cabins overlooking the beach where we spent the first few days was much less so. The AC in them is probably fine in January, but severely lacking in the 90+ temp of May. We ate in a number of little places all over West End, including hot dog stands on wheels and enjoyed it all. Unfortunately, a number of recommended places were closed when we visited. It was a time when many of the locals close up and go on vacation.
The locals were great if you go out and actually meet some of them. We visited Rudy's several times and got to know Rudy pretty well while enjoying the best smoothies anywhere! He was very helpful in telling us about local places that would be interesting to visit and we followed his advise. Shopkeepers, hotel workers, dive personnel, locals relaxing at the beach, and even taxi drivers were very nice to us and we did find a special "culture" to enjoy there. It might not be "Honduras" culture, but it was surely different than Arkansas, or Texas.
Roatan is not Cozumel, or Grand Cayman, but it has its own special charm that is second to none. I am longing to get to go back next spring and the only change I would want is wholesale quantities of deet for the hungry sand flies that apparently like paradise as much as we do. Native Sons is fantastic and Seagrape is very comfortable, although a bit remote from the action in West End. (about 10 minutes walk) Prices were very reasonable and there is good air access through TACA, and a couple other airlines. I will be back!!!
