ddawson
Contributor
At
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/ece/crb/dawson/scubareports/scubareports.htm
You can download a slideshow and blow by blow description of the diving by downloading the long version of the trip report
General: We took our first trip to Roatan on August 6-13, 2005 and stayed at Coco View Resort. CCV is a dedicated all-inclusive dive resort which can accommodate roughly 72 guests on-site. The resort was full the week we were there due to the presence of two rather large groups. While this did not cause problems with meals or crowding around the resort grounds, the dive boats were (over)crowded. We found the diving on Roatan to be very good, especially the walls, which were really colorful with abundant sponges and corals. The fish life was also healthy lots of schools of small fish on many dives, though not great numbers of large fish. In comparison to other dive destinations we have visited (the East End of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, Cozumel, the Kona coast of Hawaii, Utila and Dominica), we found the diving here to be better than Cozumel/Bonaire/Bahamas, but not quite as good as Utila, and a grade below Little Cayman and Dominica. In terms of direct comparison to next-door-neighbor Utila, we both agree that the dive sites on the north side of Utila are generally better than the best sites on this section of Roatan, and there is more diversity in terms of the dive sites on Utila. However, the closeness of the dive sites at CCV and the easy shore diving give Roatan (especially CCV) an advantage in that regard. The weather was very nice during our stay mostly sunny every day with no rain during the daytime. Some cloud cover appeared occasionally, especially in the mornings, but never lasted for extended periods of time. We used insect repellent with Deet throughout the week and experienced no problems with mosquitoes or no-see-ums. \
Travel: We flew from Atlanta through Houston to Roatan on Continental. Our trip down went perfectly without delays, and we arrived at CCV early in the afternoon. Nora from CCV met the resort guests in the baggage claim area of the airport and took our bags once we claimed them. We took the CCV bus (not the really nice one from the video commercial, but it was okay) to a dock about 30 minutes from the airport, from which we were ferried over to the CCV dock -- about a 4-5 minute boat ride. On our return trip the following Saturday, we experienced a 90-minute delay on the Houston-Atlanta flight, and one of our bags didnt make it back with us. We learned from the lost-bag clerk that the conveyer system had gone down in Houston and thousands of bags were temporarily stuck there. We found it irritating that a Continental representative never came by the luggage carousel to tell people of the problem and we kept waiting for our bag for a LONG time. The bag was delivered to our home on Monday.
Lodging/Dining: We stayed in an over-the-water cabana, which was a duplex, and found it to be very nice. It was air conditioned with two double beds and plenty of storage space. The bathroom was outfitted with shower, toilet and sink, and we were never short on hot water. Of course, the resort had standard Central American plumbing (no flushing of toilet paper) and the tap water is not potable. A large jug of drinking water was provided in the room. Our balcony was furnished with a hammock and Adirondack chair and offered a beautiful
view. Maid service was provided daily and towels were replenished each day. Guest rooms do not have televisions or phones, which was fine with us. The electrical outlets in the room took standard US plugs. The grounds were nicely maintained and ample sitting areas were located around the resort. The main building contained the office and gift shop in addition to the dining area. The dining room was cooled with ceiling fans and not air conditioned, so it did get hot at times. Phone calls to the US can be made from a phone in the office at the rate of $1 per minute. This was nice for checking in on the children during the week. The food here was average, but certainly acceptable considering CCVs relatively low price. All meals are served buffet style. Breakfast was actually quite good with hot meats and made-to-order omelettes, pancakes, waffles, etc. as well as cold cereals and bagels. We both thought the coffee was awful, though. Lunches and dinners ranged from below average to good, though a few meals were actually quite good. For some of the meals there were very limited choices, particularly with regard to side dishes, and the desserts were not fancy (cakes tasted like they were made from box mixes, but a knowledgeable source told me they were homemade). Fresh fruit was usually available at breakfast and lunch (bananas, watermelon). On Friday night we were served surf and turf, which was excellent. Also, there was a free rum punch party in the bar/recreation area after dinner with live music and dancing. You can purchase sodas from the bar in the dining area, and you can get sodas and a limited variety of snacks from a small on-site store called The Trading Post. However, of the 5 times I tried to patronize The Trading Post (during posted business hours), I found it open only once. If you want any snacks between meals or after night dives, you should bring them with you.
Diving: The resort has 4 large dive boats, which we found to be the best boats we have ever been on. Divers could enter the water two at a time from the back of the boat or from either of two side entries. The boats are covered in the front, open in the back. All boats had mask rinse buckets and nice large, clean camera rinse tanks. Upon arrival, you are assigned a boat for the week and your gear is set up on the same spot on the boat all week long. The gear rooms are spacious and well designed. They are walk-through garage-style rooms with one end open to the dock by your boat and the other end open to rinse tanks and drying racks facing the back of the main resort building. There are large rinse tanks on both sides of the gear rooms and camera rinse tanks on the resort-side. The dive schedule includes two boat dives per day, one in the morning just after breakfast and one in the afternoon right after lunch. The boat rides to the sites tend to be 5 to 25 minutes, though most are in the 10-minute range. Following each boat dive, you have an option to do a drop-off dive along one of the two walls on either side of the boat channel or on the Prince Albert wreck in the channel. You can also do shore dives any time of the day or night, conditions permitting. Tanks are stored in the gear room area, and you need to suit up there, then walk around the main building to the shore dive entry site.
There is a relatively smooth entry channel from shore, where you walk out to a wooden platform where you can don your fins and mask before swimming out to the wreck or the walls. We joked that the CCV video which describes the shore diving as a few fin kicks away needs to be modified to a few HUNDRED fin kicks away as it is definitely a bit of a swim out to the walls and the wreck. While the gear set-up and the boats were really well-designed, we thought that there were too many people on each boat. We regularly had 14-16 people on board following one DM. While this was not too much of a problem for many dives, where we just followed behind the group at our own pace, this was a real issue when the DM found creatures like seahorses and everyone piled on top of each other trying to look or get a photo, or at sites like Calvins Crack and Marys Place where everyone has to go through a portion of the dive single-file.
http://www.ces.clemson.edu/ece/crb/dawson/scubareports/scubareports.htm
You can download a slideshow and blow by blow description of the diving by downloading the long version of the trip report
General: We took our first trip to Roatan on August 6-13, 2005 and stayed at Coco View Resort. CCV is a dedicated all-inclusive dive resort which can accommodate roughly 72 guests on-site. The resort was full the week we were there due to the presence of two rather large groups. While this did not cause problems with meals or crowding around the resort grounds, the dive boats were (over)crowded. We found the diving on Roatan to be very good, especially the walls, which were really colorful with abundant sponges and corals. The fish life was also healthy lots of schools of small fish on many dives, though not great numbers of large fish. In comparison to other dive destinations we have visited (the East End of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, the Bahamas, Belize, Bonaire, Cozumel, the Kona coast of Hawaii, Utila and Dominica), we found the diving here to be better than Cozumel/Bonaire/Bahamas, but not quite as good as Utila, and a grade below Little Cayman and Dominica. In terms of direct comparison to next-door-neighbor Utila, we both agree that the dive sites on the north side of Utila are generally better than the best sites on this section of Roatan, and there is more diversity in terms of the dive sites on Utila. However, the closeness of the dive sites at CCV and the easy shore diving give Roatan (especially CCV) an advantage in that regard. The weather was very nice during our stay mostly sunny every day with no rain during the daytime. Some cloud cover appeared occasionally, especially in the mornings, but never lasted for extended periods of time. We used insect repellent with Deet throughout the week and experienced no problems with mosquitoes or no-see-ums. \
Travel: We flew from Atlanta through Houston to Roatan on Continental. Our trip down went perfectly without delays, and we arrived at CCV early in the afternoon. Nora from CCV met the resort guests in the baggage claim area of the airport and took our bags once we claimed them. We took the CCV bus (not the really nice one from the video commercial, but it was okay) to a dock about 30 minutes from the airport, from which we were ferried over to the CCV dock -- about a 4-5 minute boat ride. On our return trip the following Saturday, we experienced a 90-minute delay on the Houston-Atlanta flight, and one of our bags didnt make it back with us. We learned from the lost-bag clerk that the conveyer system had gone down in Houston and thousands of bags were temporarily stuck there. We found it irritating that a Continental representative never came by the luggage carousel to tell people of the problem and we kept waiting for our bag for a LONG time. The bag was delivered to our home on Monday.
Lodging/Dining: We stayed in an over-the-water cabana, which was a duplex, and found it to be very nice. It was air conditioned with two double beds and plenty of storage space. The bathroom was outfitted with shower, toilet and sink, and we were never short on hot water. Of course, the resort had standard Central American plumbing (no flushing of toilet paper) and the tap water is not potable. A large jug of drinking water was provided in the room. Our balcony was furnished with a hammock and Adirondack chair and offered a beautiful
view. Maid service was provided daily and towels were replenished each day. Guest rooms do not have televisions or phones, which was fine with us. The electrical outlets in the room took standard US plugs. The grounds were nicely maintained and ample sitting areas were located around the resort. The main building contained the office and gift shop in addition to the dining area. The dining room was cooled with ceiling fans and not air conditioned, so it did get hot at times. Phone calls to the US can be made from a phone in the office at the rate of $1 per minute. This was nice for checking in on the children during the week. The food here was average, but certainly acceptable considering CCVs relatively low price. All meals are served buffet style. Breakfast was actually quite good with hot meats and made-to-order omelettes, pancakes, waffles, etc. as well as cold cereals and bagels. We both thought the coffee was awful, though. Lunches and dinners ranged from below average to good, though a few meals were actually quite good. For some of the meals there were very limited choices, particularly with regard to side dishes, and the desserts were not fancy (cakes tasted like they were made from box mixes, but a knowledgeable source told me they were homemade). Fresh fruit was usually available at breakfast and lunch (bananas, watermelon). On Friday night we were served surf and turf, which was excellent. Also, there was a free rum punch party in the bar/recreation area after dinner with live music and dancing. You can purchase sodas from the bar in the dining area, and you can get sodas and a limited variety of snacks from a small on-site store called The Trading Post. However, of the 5 times I tried to patronize The Trading Post (during posted business hours), I found it open only once. If you want any snacks between meals or after night dives, you should bring them with you.
Diving: The resort has 4 large dive boats, which we found to be the best boats we have ever been on. Divers could enter the water two at a time from the back of the boat or from either of two side entries. The boats are covered in the front, open in the back. All boats had mask rinse buckets and nice large, clean camera rinse tanks. Upon arrival, you are assigned a boat for the week and your gear is set up on the same spot on the boat all week long. The gear rooms are spacious and well designed. They are walk-through garage-style rooms with one end open to the dock by your boat and the other end open to rinse tanks and drying racks facing the back of the main resort building. There are large rinse tanks on both sides of the gear rooms and camera rinse tanks on the resort-side. The dive schedule includes two boat dives per day, one in the morning just after breakfast and one in the afternoon right after lunch. The boat rides to the sites tend to be 5 to 25 minutes, though most are in the 10-minute range. Following each boat dive, you have an option to do a drop-off dive along one of the two walls on either side of the boat channel or on the Prince Albert wreck in the channel. You can also do shore dives any time of the day or night, conditions permitting. Tanks are stored in the gear room area, and you need to suit up there, then walk around the main building to the shore dive entry site.
There is a relatively smooth entry channel from shore, where you walk out to a wooden platform where you can don your fins and mask before swimming out to the wreck or the walls. We joked that the CCV video which describes the shore diving as a few fin kicks away needs to be modified to a few HUNDRED fin kicks away as it is definitely a bit of a swim out to the walls and the wreck. While the gear set-up and the boats were really well-designed, we thought that there were too many people on each boat. We regularly had 14-16 people on board following one DM. While this was not too much of a problem for many dives, where we just followed behind the group at our own pace, this was a real issue when the DM found creatures like seahorses and everyone piled on top of each other trying to look or get a photo, or at sites like Calvins Crack and Marys Place where everyone has to go through a portion of the dive single-file.
