Roatan surface activities

Hi, all,

I've been giving some thought to taking a trip to Coco View Resort. From what I read, it is a pretty nice place to go and dive. If I do make the trip, I will be traveling with another diver and a non-diver. The non-diver is older, and she cannot swim. However, she is comfortable with the quiet setting, etc. I noticed that there are some activities that can be booked through the resort, and I was wondering if anyone has done any of these. Particularly, the trip to the mainland to see the ruins. Her primary concern is of course "how safe am I going to be." While I realize that there are always risks and common sense has to be used anywhere, I am interested on feedback about the activities and general sense of safety and well-being.

Thanks for any feedback.

At CCV, I have left cameras and iPads lying about with never entertaining a worry. They give out keys to the rooms, but most who have been there before disregard them and leave the keys on the table. The resort is located on a private cay (island) off of the main body of Roatan, the security is very well trained , 24/7 and is widely understood by local denizens that it is a "hard target", best avoided. Locally it is known as "the rock" due to its isolation, accessed only by boat.

Any escorted tour to the mainland is an unlikely candidate for criminal activity. The "ladrones" are well aware of Police interest in keeping this viable golden goose of tourism flowing. Other un-escorted activities on the mainland of Honduras, I would counsel against.

There is a fairly constant flow of visiting artists and vendors to CCV. They feature locally made stuff, unlike most other tourist locales on Roatan that have a plethora of Guatemalan imports.

In the evening, there are always excellent naturalist presentations plus two lectures by Doc Radawski, who has been on-island since 1970. He is a well respected founder of the dive industry and archeologist, but his main notoriety is from appearances on the Discovery Channel, waxing poetic about Crystal Skulls (during the Indiana Jones hype) and their connection to Roatan.

There are a few on-Roatan activities that they might find appealing. There's any number of threads on that, as well as on CocoChat link> CoCo Chat the message board or you can link to off the top right of the CCV website. Highly recommended reading, there are numerous posts on this subject.

CCV will supply you with an English speaking driver from a service run by a former dive master, Alex Gomez. A much better alternative than renting a vehicle.

Due our getting in 20 plus dives a week when we are there we haven't done many of the excursions. I have talked with other guests that raved about the sea plane tour and the ATV tour. The folks at the resort really look out for you. we shared a cab with another couple to the west end and were ridiculously overcharged for the fare. When they heard about it a the resort the next day they tracked down the cab driver and recovered the overcharged portion of the cab fare.

browntrout:

I have talked with other guests that raved about the sea plane tour and the ATV tour.

Click to expand...

I can't see either of them being high on her list...or the Stanley Submarine.

The non-diver is older, and she cannot swim.

Click to expand...

Thank you all for the quick updates! I'll be certain to share this information!

Hello, Madison,

Let me weigh in. If your non-diving fellow traveler is pretty comfortable traveling on her own (with the non-swimming caveat), she'd probably be OK with staying at CCV, and taking the shuttle/taxi/driver, and wandering on the main island.

If she's not OK with traveling on her own, but is self-sufficient with self-entertainment (knitting, DVDs, internet, etc.), she'll be fine just hanging on the room porch/hammock, or on the shaded hammock structure. (Or back in the room when things get hot, and she wants AC).

I traveled with non-diving family, and stayed in one of the Playa Miguel beach houses at CocoView. I had warned them that there would be no non-diving activities (except for the dolphin trip), and they were fine with that. They brought lots of DVDs to watch, and I think even bought some streaming movies from Amazon while there. They snorkeled about twice a day. I tried to get them to do a night snorkel, but couldn't talk them into it.

I would warn you that if you're used to, say Marriott Courtyard or Hampton Inn style accommodations, these are not it. Spouse and child are still freaked out about seeing a gecko in the living room (I say it's just eating the mosquitoes, but that's me . I found the accommodations clean, and the water hot (even if the pressure was variable). People are friendly. A few non-diving spouses and minimally diving children when we were there.

You know your non-diver best. If she's pretty comfortable with not seeing you most of the day while you and diver are out diving, and not horribly picky about accommodations, she should be fine. Deb (one of the managing owners) is pretty outgoing, and can help her make arrangements suitable to see things on the main island, subject to constraints (no Nordstrom's for shopping, for example).

Hope all these comments helped!

Thanks! What you describe would be more than acceptable. Appreciate your feedback!