Kindness @ CocoView

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WrmBluH2O

Contributor
Messages
157
Reaction score
48
Location
Dallas, TX
# of dives
50 - 99
Hey All,

I'm purposely posting this here in the "New Diver" forum rather than the Bay Island forum. If you all have researched possible good places to go as a new diver, you will undoubtedly have seen CocoView in Roatan, Honduras come up again and again.

Here is why CocoView was so good for me as a newbie with only one post-certification dive under my belt. My better half got ill early on and was unable to dive. I asked if there was a DiveMaster (DM) or Asst. DM who might be available and willing to be my buddy (for pay) that day. The DM who accompanied me was outstanding; he was kind, patient, and had an incredibly calming presence.

I bought a $17 Trident magnifying glass from the dive shop. We decided to shore dive the front yard and part of the CocoView wall. I would have had to be blind to not see the oodles of lobster, trumpet fish, barracuda, permit, flounder, garden eels, and the lone spotted eagle ray that swooped by us.

But thanks to him I saw cleaner shrimp, two different types of juvenile pipefish, sailfish blenny, scorpionfish, goby, the Mario Andretti of sea cucumber rolling at warp speed, a moray eel (under ledge), big crab (also hiding under different ledge), peacock flounder, two different "snakes" in shallows that apparently are actually eels, as well as what I thought was a sea horse (but is actually a type of sea horse look-alike).

Some of these creatures are so small and/or well camouflaged I never would have seen them without his guidance. He also helped me greatly with descents and buoyancy. My hubby was sick for three days total, and I am lucky and grateful that he dove with me each day.

That said, the people on our boat couldn't have been more lovely. They kept asking when I/we were coming back to the boat. They offered to let me buddy with them. Folks from another boat did the same. Divers are so very friendly and generous because, honestly, how many people truly want to buddy with the new guy on their vacation? :D

While I don't mean this as a trip report, I will say the food was quite good, so much better than I had expected. I particularly liked the soups. Good variety of nicely cooked vegetables. I think I'd read reviews that said meals tended toward the fried and fatty; I did not find that to be the case. Btw, the wine pours are a trough. Be careful. :cool:

Not one no-see-um bite, and those ba$tards usually love me. (My husband had two bites total for the week.) Granted it was windy last week and/or it may simply not have been that time in their life cycle? :shrug: I did wear long sleeve Permethrin-treated clothing and pants, as well as showered the salt water off the moment I took off my wetsuit.

Everybody at CocoView was cool. I think it would be a great place for any new divers or new single diver to choose.
 
Coco View has a great rep for a reason. However, no matter where you go, hiring a private local guide is almost always worth your while. Don't let others glom on to you either. Keep it private and reap the rewards!
 
I'll agree there's a great deal to like about CocoView, including their easy access to some fine diving. My experience with them, however, wasn't as customer-friendly as yours, although admittedly it happened more than a decade ago. We arranged our trip, and our flight, for six days of diving ... scheduled to fly through the night in order to arrive in time for the morning's orientation so that we would be able to dive on arrival day. We arrived at the airport as scheduled ... then waited more than an hour for the resort's driver to arrive to pick us up. At the time ... and probably still ... there was no place inside the airport to wait. So we were left standing curbside, in the hot sun, to await the driver. Due to our late arrival at the resort, we missed the morning orientation. It was underway when we got there, and they would not allow us to dive until we'd gone through the entire orientation. So we were told that we would be unable to dive that day. I offered to pay extra for an orientation for the four of us in my group, and was told that wasn't possible. Their exact words were "there's nothing we can do". So we didn't dive until the next day. Now, if it were a safety issue, I would be able to justify it. But the orientation was primarily to familiarize us with the resort, and make known to us all the amenities we could buy that weren't included in our package. Then we were taken out for a "safety check" which consisted primarily of repeating some OW exercises such as mask clear and air share while kneeling in chest-deep water out in the front yard. Worse, the DM who did these checks WOULD NOT ALLOW me to do them while hovering in three feet of water, insisting I had to be on my knees "so he could make sure I was properly weighted".

Despite all the nice things that happened during the remainder of our stay, that to this day sticks in my craw. Their driver was late to pick us up because he decided to take his wife to market that morning (using the resort van), and as a result we missed a day of diving. Kindness, in our case, would have been finding a way to get us diving on arrival day, particularly since it was their fault we were late, we had emphasized diving on arrival day as a priority when we signed up for the trip, and even more so since I had offered to pay them extra if only they'd work with us to make it happen.

What we got instead was not my idea of good customer service. We settled for snorkeling in the front yard, which was nice ... but not what we had paid for.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)
 
Bonaire: arrived at around 2-ish, but by the time we got the truck, got to the resort, checked in and dropped off the bags is was getting closer to 4. Which happened to be dive shop's closing time, so no gear, no checkout dive that day.

Roatan: arrived early enough, went through express line and were met by the resort staff, but then we waited for someone else who was supposed to be on our flight. (There is arrival hall with decent coffee and other refreshments now.) By the time we decided they're no-show the next flight landed and we waited a bit more -- "might as well' -- for the couple from there. Got the gear etc. sorted out the same day, but orientation's early in the morning and we were missing it anyway.

We were able to do the checkout dive and sign up for the boats etc. on the day of arrival on Curacao.

It's mañana 2 out of 3 so far.

(I do agree that driver taking wife to market is over the top, though.)
 

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