West Bay Roatan dive ops near/at Infinity

[scorman]

We have settled on booking the Paradise Oceanic for 10 nights and got surprisingly cheap airfare out of Newark,NJ ($438).
Now we checked out dive ops at nearby locations such as Bananarama (great reviews), and Infinity Bay etc.
TGI now runs ops from Morgan, Paradise Oceanic, Infinity where they state the center is on the grounds of Oceanic and at Morgan.
However, Infinity also shows a Infinity Divers Aqua Center (at the dock just rebuilt after storm in Jan??).
I see photos of larger boats supposedly from the dock, and fairly small blue topped boats off the beach.
In a contact with Aqua, they claim they are same company as TGI but with diff boats and a diff center ...seems strange arrangement.

Can anyone clarify what is there and how many diff ops are being run from the same two resorts?
Do all the dive ops load from the beach??

Infinity Divers | - Scuba Diving in Roatan
THE DIVING CENTER - TGI Diving int

I note that West End Divers (very highly rated) used to be at the Paradise, but had recently (Oct?) moved elsewhere.
The Infinity Divers link above "resort" tab includes:
"10 boat dives with unlimited unguided shore dives (8:00 am to 3:00 pm)" , BUT I thought that only guided shores dives were allowed under the rules of the marine park??

TIA,
Stew Corman

 

[irishtn]

I have dove with both Bananarama and Infinity Divers and liked both but I would give the nod to Infinity. Not sure if this helps or not. Really enjoyed their service. No idea on shore diving.

 

[Mike]

Loading from the beach is common on west bay beach.

Bananarama is a no-brainer, as is Mayan Divers at the Mayan Princess. Mayan divers does a ton of education, the diving with them is very safe if not a bit too tame for me anymore. Banarama offers diving a bit more in line with my style of diving where you want a bit more variety and a bit more exciting.

Everything about the Henry Morgan to me is a cluster F, I've no experience with their dive op, but just based on how the resort runs I wouldn't dive with them when there were other choices I had. The confusion and goofiness of what you're experiencing just trying to figure them out is on par for anything associated with them as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know when you're going, but if it's during the winter rainy season at all, I'd advise making sure you dive with somebody who has the ability to offer diving on the south side if conditions turn nasty on the north side and stop you from diving there. Banarama and Mayan divers both cover this, I don't know about anybody else personally in regard to that.

 

[cdemith]

I am staying at Bananarama right now, through Thursday. I dont see much of a dive op at Infinity (pretty much right next door). I did see a bigger dive boat loading this morning at their dock, but that was the first in the last 4 days.

Bananarama is pretty good. Some site selections were not awesome, others were good to great. Ill post a full review shortly. They run pangas, with at most 6 divers/1 DM per so far. DMs have been very hands off after the first 2 days. It is a marine park though, so they insist on you sticking with the group. Also, have not had any cruise ship people on board.

Spoke to some divers on the boat today staying at Mayan, they have skipped their op on the last 2 trips, in favor of Bananarama. Said they seemed "a bit flaky." However, hearsay is what it is. Morgan looks unattended. I havent seen any boats from them so far.

If I come to Roatan again and stay in West Bay, I'll stick with Bananarama. I would also definitely consider West End and one of the many many ops there.

Enjoy yor trip. Infinity looks like an amazing place.

 

[irishtn]

@cdemith: Infinity Divers is kinda hidden in the confines of their property. Infinity has 2 big dive boats which always load from the dock. I have never seen them not dive a day when I was staying there. I guess its possible but maybe their times didnt mesh with yours. They usually run 3 tanks a day.

 

[scorman]

Sent a note into TGI asking about their arrangements at Paradise, which is sandwiched between Infinty and Banarama, but no response yet.
Supposedly they have a largish black hulled boat which also launches from the IB dock, but have their own center on the Paradise property.
We are going on May 1st when hopefully the weather is ideal.

Stew

 

[RTee]

There seems to have been quite a turn over at Mayan Divers since I was there in Feb 13 for two weeks. It seems only Jeannot remains. However, during that period I did 32 dives and I did enjoy the way they operated. Being part of a larger group for the first week, we always had pretty much the same DM assigned to us and after the first couple of dives, they adapted to the way we wanted to dive and really enjoyed ourselves. Not quite sure how they run their operations now.

 

[sup]

Inifinity divers was my dive op two years ago on my very first dive trip and nobody I've dove with since has matched them in terms of quality. They spoiled me for all other dive shops. The DMs were so personable and put safety first, the boats were nice and fast, and they came back to the dock for every surface interval, which was nice as I hate bobbing around for an hour in a tiny boat. They valet your gear and it's on the boat when you get on every day, which was awesome. We rented gear for two all week, including computers, and never had a single equipment problem whatsoever - not even a leaky o-ring on a tank. It was a fantastic experience and I wish every dive op was run so well.