Reef House Resort - Roatan

Here's our brief trip report - once the film's developed, we'll have an opportunity for more details.

"We spent the week of April 2 through 9, 2005 as guests at Reef House Resort, and had a wondeful, relaxing time. The new owners, Larry & Carol, and their son-in-law Barry were gracious and accomodating hosts. We felt like we were living the life of the rich & famous, as 5 of the 7 days we stayed there, we were the only guests, and all week we were the only scuba divers staying at the resort - it was like having a private staff all our own. The meals, a mix of local dishes and more typical gringo fare, were all delicious, and served piping hot from the kitchen - no buffet tables with stuff drying out on them.

The rooms are cozy, and undergoing renovation by the new owners, with everything progressing nicely. We recommend reserving rooms S1 or S2 if possible, for more romantic privacy, as these 2 rooms are in their own building on the opposite side of the kitchen / dining room from the main set of rooms. These sit up a little higher and have a superb view from the veranda of tropical foliage and the Caribbean waters.

David, the dive master, and Choko, the boat captain, are some of the best we've had the pleasure to experience in our travels. David sets excellent multi-level profiles, and sets a nice pace for seeing a lot of different stuff. They would also ensure each time the boat anchor and anchor line were set in a sandy flat, not on any coral - there a very few mooring balls at this end of the island. They do an excellent job of setting up all your gear each time, and the diving right in front of the resort is as good as any on this side of the island, with lots of basket starts open at night. Over the course of the week, we saw frogfish, pipefish, lettuce leaf sea slugs, multiple sea horses, beautiful forests of black coral and deep sea gorgonians, moray eels, and a host of other Caribbean species.

All in all, we can definitely say we had a great vacation at Reef House Resort. It was the perfect time and place for us to unwind for a week from our hectic daily lives here in the USA. Muchas Gracias again to the owners and staff for making our trip so enjoyable."

Nice report... could you please tell me which end of the island you were on? Also - I understand that a lot of the diving is drift diving... is this true?

Reef House Resort is on a small island off the shore of Oak Ridge. 'Far from the maddening crowds' is what we typically seek, and this spot certainly filled the bill for us.

None of the dives we did were drift dives during our week's stay.

http://www.reefhouseresort.com/

WarmWaterDiver:

Reef House Resort is on a small island off the shore of Oak Ridge. 'Far from the maddening crowds' is what we typically seek, and this spot certainly filled the bill for us.

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Pipefish. How cool is that? The holy grail!

Glad to hear of your good experience!

Yep - Harlequin Pipefish - in the shallows / coral garden area at Church Wall - which was our first dive on our trip - but I was the only one who saw it, and I'm not the photographer, so no pics. This is something we hadn't seen elsewhere in our dive travels. I also saw a Beaded Sea Cucumber on one of our night dives, and that's something else we hadn't seen elsewhere, but by the time my wife, with the camera, got near, it had displayed the 'extremely contractile' behavior described in the Reef Creature book, and retreated to a cranny at only a small fraction of it's extended length.

No whale shark sightings for us while we were there, but we have another shot at that later this year as we're booked on an excursion to the Flower Gardens NMS soon after the coral spawning occurs at that area.

We also found the Orange Cup Corals in several places on our night dives, and this species isn't documented as being in the Bay Islands area as of the last edition we have of the Reef Coral book. There's a good picture (taken by someone else) on one of the Reef House Resort web pages.

We went on the Shark Dive excursion at Cara a Cara, and it was what I'd classify as a good dive. Our natural shark encounters at Tikehau and Bora Bora in French Polynesia topped this as no chum / food was required there. But, the 'staged' element of it on Roatan was pretty well minimized, and this again was my wife, me, one dive master from the group of Italians that run this excursion, and one local boat captain, so more of a personal experience - not part of a big dive group. We didn't get videography with our shark dive, although while we were suiting up, the previous morning's group was reviewing their video in the shop. Somehow, the video rig was mysteriously 'not working' suddenly when it was just the wife & me for the next trip, which would mean selling only 1 copy - hmmmm. I liked the dive, but not the folks who run the shop that provide it - I can give more details on why, but thought I'd wait until the film's developed for more details. Anyone going to Roatan before we get the film developed can PM me for more details in the mean time, if desired.

WarmWaterDiver:

We also found the Orange Cup Corals in several places on our night dives, and this species isn't documented as being in the Bay Islands area as of the last edition we have of the Reef Coral book. .

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Actualy they are all over the place. I find them quite regularly on the underside of ledges at 28-34 fsw.

The area you were in is also well known for a large local Toadfish population. See any?

Orange cup corals on the underside is common for the species, something about them & direct sunlight. Just curious if anyone's informed Humann & DeLoach as this isn't shown for the Bay Islands in their book. Saw them all over in Bonaire and Curacao.

We heard some toadfish close by on night dives at the house reef of Reef House - my wife was the one to first correctly identify the sound. I thought the DM's first stage had something going on at first. But, we heard them only, no direct sightings this trip, although we knew we were close by. It was new moon when we were there, and the night skies we surfaced to after night dives were fantastic.

I was attacked by a damselfish at Mary's Place - not in the cracks. I was swimming alongside the wall, and something was suddenly flapping against my upper left arm right below where the shorty wetsuit sleeve ended - what the heck?? My wife said she laughed seeing me 'spaz' (as she put it) from the feisty little bugger.

WarmWaterDiver:

Orange cup corals on the underside is common for the species, something about them & direct sunlight. Just curious if anyone's informed Humann & DeLoach as this isn't shown for the Bay Islands in their book. Saw them all over in Bonaire and Curacao.

I was curious about the depth. I wonder if that it was because the first overhang on the South side of Roatan occurs at that level, or... ? Maybe there are some deeper. We saw them all over The Maldives and the DM's were so jaded by them, they never pointed them out. (Like Frogfish in Galapagos)

Also tell Paul that the Toadfish have migrated from Belize as well... the only place they are mentioned as inabiting in that truly handy and worthy-of-having book.

We heard some toadfish close by on night dives at the house reef of Reef House - my wife was the one to first correctly identify the sound. I thought the DM's first stage had something going on at first. But, we heard them only, no direct sightings this trip, although we knew we were close by. It was new moon when we were there, and the night skies we surfaced to after night dives were fantastic.

I was attacked by a damselfish at Mary's Place - not in the cracks. I was swimming alongside the wall, and something was suddenly flapping against my upper left arm right below where the shorty wetsuit sleeve ended - what the heck?? My wife said she laughed seeing me 'spaz' (as she put it) from the feisty little bugger.

Give me a Damselfish that weighs in at 8+ pounds. "Jaws" would skeedaddle. They do seem to attack your "trailing edges", nipping at your hands if they are trailing at your side. Take along a small mirror and prop it up on their area of dominance. They will attack it or even a red laser dot.

We have a little Tupperware container with many tiny holes punched into it. We load it with a few pieces of breakfast sausage and when a diver isn't looking it gets snapped onto their first stage array. Boy, are they popular with the "locals"!

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Glad to hear of your excellent experience in the less often dived areas off of Roatan. Did they take you to "Hole inthe Wall" and did you snorkel around "Cow and Calf"? Do the venture off into the flasts on the far East End between Roatan and Barbaretta? Lots of Rays and Sharks over there!

We saw the orange cup corals bteween 20 FSW and 40 FSW at two different locations while in Roatan. First was on a night dive by the work-not-in-progress lighthouse at the bay entrance for Oak Ridge, and the other was a night dive on the Reef House house reef. At Bonaire, we saw orange cup corals in 3 FSW to 100 FSW, under docks, on the 'shady' spots on the Hilma Hooker, etc. Here's the great photo (not taken by us) of the ones on the Reef House house reef.

http://www.reefhouseresort.com/specials.html

No pics of toadfish - I might as well tell Humann & DeLoach I saw/heard Nessie at Roatan without a pic.

We dove from Mary's Place and the CoCo View wrecks in one direction from Reef House to Sponge Garden the other direction. We never wound up 'sharing' a dive site with others while underwater during our stay. The closest times were when we were approaching Calvin's Crack, a Coco View boat was just starting to bring their divers out of the water, and at Mary's Place, some boats were aprroaching just as we were leaving.

No trips to more remote areas like Barbareta, Morat Wall, etc. for us unfortunately due to boat issues this trip, though Reef House visitors' shouldn't wind up experiencing these in the future, since the new owners had both the Henry Morgan and the Calico Jack's motors fully repaired and overhauled by the time we were leaving. We did dive a couple of days from the Calico Jack before a bearing in the lower end suddenly siezed (DM swam to shore and towed us in from the taxi boat), and we dove from the 10' taxi boat the rest of our stay, or traded boat dives for guided shore dives as our idea. We wouldn't trade diving with David & Choko from the taxi boat vs. being trucked to another operation to dive with a different DM and boat captain for anything! The new owners' 'comped' us the shark dives, even though I tried to insist otherwise, and gasoline for the taxi boat to make the round trip to Mary's Place was around 500 Lempiras. We tipped hopefully well though, and it's worthy of note we got this stupendous service even though we didn't tip until after our last dive, for the whole week's service. The whole resort staff seemed very happy with our tips, which are always a bit hard to judge when on 'package' price vacations, and to remember the less obtrusive yet good service staff like kitchen staff, security guard, housekeeping etc. whose efforts may not be as directly visible to the overall contribution for a great vacation, but every bit as important. They (the staff) did tell us "You have to come back! Next time, Morat Wall, Barbareta, anywhere you want to go!" enthusiastically when we were leaving, so I took that as a good sign we hit the mark with our tips.

Anyway, more details after the film's developed - I wish Kodak would up the technology of their Sea Processing service for 35 mm, but maybe that's just going to mean I upgrade the wife to U/W digital some time in the next year if they don't.

Okay, I finaly got around to putting up a photo album on Scubaboard. Here's the link to our photos from our Roatan trip to Reef House Resort in April 2005.

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/1438