Roatan in December

[SeaHorist]

Interested in diving in Roatan but the ideal time is late December/January. Wondering about conditions that time of year. We’re already aware that is a busy time there but are mostly concerned with getting shut out should there be some wind/waves.

We have dove Cozumel during the same time and have been pretty lucky but if the wind picks up there (as can happen in the winter) the diving gets completely shut down. This is for a few reasons that might be unique to Cozumel so I wonder if the same or similar can happen in Roatan.

Thanks for any insight!

 

[therookie]

Hi @SeaHorist. Diving in Roatan rarely "gets completely shut down", even during the rainy season. The geography of the island makes it so that when the (usually) calm West End / West Bay area is rough then the south side is (usually) quite a bit calmer. Even with relatively strong trade winds from the east (making the south side choppy) the island shelters West End and West Bay. The rainy season makes the weather more unpredictable than usual but many dive shops have made arrangements for docking privileges on both sides specifically to prevent them being "shut out" due to weather. It's not impossible for the weather to be such that it isn't safe for the boats to be out on either side, but it's uncommon.

"Rainy season" on Roatan does not ("usually", I know I'm saying that a lot) mean that it rains all day every day - it just means the four months from Oct - Jan are when Roatan gets about 2/3 of its annual rainfall, on average. Much of it happens at night (as posted above) and the early morning. We were there last December (first half of the month) and there were some truly miserable days with cold (by my admittedly tropical standards), rainy, windy conditions on the west side and even relatively rough water on the south side, but our operator ran anyway (transporting two small boatloads of us by bus from West Bay to the south side at their expense) and even though the surface conditions were miserable those three days the dives were amazing.

Check in advance with the dive op you are thinking of going with to see if they can do that, though. The weather on the island between October and January is a bit of a dice roll...

 

[VaughnBuck]

Skip Roatan, try Curacao.

Thanks. Any suggestions on lodging etc

 

[aquabluegreg]

LionsDive Resort (breakfast / Ocean Encounters), Sunscape Resort (all-inclusive / Ocean Encounters), Hector Suites / Goby Divers.

 

[TNEngineer]

I'll second Ocean Encounters. We just dove with them a couple of weeks ago. Very good team, with the one caveat that they like to pack their dive boats. They had 22 divers on each of two dive boats(!). They handled it very well but you need to allow for that if you're not into higher density diving.

 

[GBD]

Interested in diving in Roatan but the ideal time is late December/January. Wondering about conditions that time of year. We’re already aware that is a busy time there but are mostly concerned with getting shut out should there be some wind/waves.

We have dove Cozumel during the same time and have been pretty lucky but if the wind picks up there (as can happen in the winter) the diving gets completely shut down. This is for a few reasons that might be unique to Cozumel so I wonder if the same or similar can happen in Roatan.

Thanks for any insight!

Hi SeaHorist,

Conditions can be more variable in the winter. The winds are sometimes stronger, and it’s not uncommon for rain to make an appearance. Despite this, the diving conditions remain excellent. Visibility can be affected by rain, but it rarely lasts long. You can dive in Roatan year-round (both winter and summer), but it's important to know that winter conditions can be a bit more turbulent.

When conditions are too poor on one side of the island, we can dive on the other side (for example, dive activities are mainly concentrated in the northwest, but when conditions there aren’t suitable, we dive on the south side). It’s very rare for boats not to go out.

Most of the time, conditions are very favorable, and there are often very few waves on the northwest side. However, in winter, you should also be prepared for conditions to change quickly.

I can provide more details if you're interested in diving in Roatan.

 

[GBD]

Spent 2 weeks at Coco View Resort. Total waste of money. Sparse, immature fish, tons of plastic in the water, poor visibility, and really "boy scout camp" food. The airport is a nightmare and you couldn't pay me enough to go back. I even won a chance at a free trip and tossed the ticket.

Hi Kharon,

It's unfortunate when people have a bad experience during their stay. If you visited in the winter, visibility can be reduced due to rain and strong winds, which often brings debris to that side of the island, unfortunately.

If you ever reconsider the island and want to give it a second chance for a different experience than an all-inclusive like CocoView, I’d be happy to provide some recommendations.

 

[Kharon]

Hi Kharon,

It's unfortunate when people have a bad experience during their stay. If you visited in the winter, visibility can be reduced due to rain and strong winds, which often brings debris to that side of the island, unfortunately.

If you ever reconsider the island and want to give it a second chance for a different experience than an all-inclusive like CocoView, I’d be happy to provide some recommendations.

I would never again suffer the "airport" horror to get on and off the island, let alone the lack of marine life. Far too many way better places to dive.

 

[Gdog]

I would never again suffer the "airport" horror to get on and off the island, let alone the lack of marine life. Far too many way better places to dive.

Then make sure you never ever travel to the Philippines! World class diving for sure. But if you think the airport at Roatan is horrible, you need to sample a little Manila! Also, Cancun is incredibly worse. And thats just to name a couple. Ive learned you just roll with it, take the good with the bad.

 

[Stoo]

We were in Roatan last December, and it literally poured rain non-stop... And I'm talking typhoon-type rains like I've never seen before. We were in West End (Hotel Chillies/Native Sons Diving). While we loved the hotel, the diving was horrible. Native Sons normally does a beach loading in front of the hotel. Because the wind was up, they trucked us (literally, a pick up truck) to the other side of the hotel. The dock there was in some shack's back yard where we waded through mud and garbage to load up their 24' centre console, which was fine as we were pretty much the only four there.

While we had a couple of decent dives, the crew kept wanting to take us towards the cruise ship pier where there was horrible run-off. The vis was crap, but the reef (and I use the term loosely) was dead or dying. One one occasion, I told our DM to PLEASE take us elsewhere, but they were insistent. I called the dive after 15 minutes. I got the distinct feeling the DMs really didn't want to be there so took us to sh!t sites to discourage us from diving. (Pfft, not happening). As a comical side-note, our boat captain who was the owner's son I believe) was a nice guy, but seemed unable to dock our boat after the dive. There was something of a cross breeze and on several days, he actually jumped out of the boat and pushed us in to the dock. Along the same lines, our female DM (in an attempt to show off I think) tossed her gear out of the boat, where she was going to don it I guess. Great plan, except it all sunk to the bottom, in about 30 feet of water. The other DM (her husband) hopped in, retrieved the gear and brought it up. His wife proceeded to freak out because he'd neglected to do a safety stop after his 30', 45 second dive. PADI quality DM right there. I imagine she was a Utila "Zero to hero" DM...

Anyway, I think the weather we got was exceptionally bad, and we're actually looking at going back this year, but to somewhere with a dock. ;-)

 

[Stoo]

I would never again suffer the "airport" horror to get on and off the island...

Interesting... When we went to Roatan last December, we went from the plane to the bar in the airport in 23 minutes. By contrast, we regularly go to Belize, and since Covid, we're typically 2.5 - 3 hours getting through. It's ludicrous and inexcusable, but it never seems to get any better. If it wasn't for the fact that our favourite dive joint in the Caribbean was there, we'd be going elsewhere. It seems that every plane that lands there lands within the same hour, and there's typically 6 or 7 of them dumping passengers at the same time.

Incidentally, we found the diving last year in Roatan to be horrible. Dead coral everywhere and very few fish generally and nothing at all "big"... no sharks, rays, groupers etc. Initially we chalked it up to the crap weather and the resultant poor options in sites (We were diving out of West End). We used to dive in Utitla frequently, but found the diving there had really gone down hill as well. I think it's primarily due to uncontrolled fishing and pollution. As @Kharon mentioned, we've never seen so much garbage in the water as we have in Roatan. I understand that their main dump is adjacent to a major river, so every heavy rain washes tons of plastic in to the water.

We have a trip to Cocoview coming up in late January. We're hoping it will be good diving, but I'm expecting Quantity over Quality.. I hope I'm wrong. If I'm not wrong, it'll be our last trip there.