AKR and CocoView together

[drrich2]

I hope you have a great time on Roatan; I suspect you'll won't be fully content till you satisfy your curiosity about it.

For future reference, considering a destination where multiple dives/day, shore diving and tech. diving are all possibilities, St. Croix could fill the bill. The north coast should offer you technical depths, and I keep reading good things about Sweet Bottom Dive Center (they support technical diving) at Carambola Renaissance Resort, located by Davis Bay, which is said to offer shore diving with shorter swim outs than Cane Bay. I believe they use St. Croix Ultimate Blue Water Adventure (S.C.U.B.A.) for boat service (providing a Sweet Bottom guide along with you); S.C.U.B.A. is another dive op. and of course you could book directly with them, although near as I can tell S.C.U.B.A. doesn't support shore diving. People talk about seeing sharks off the north wall, if that's a draw. Technically you wouldn't be leaving the country, of course.

Last I checked S.C.U.B.A. offers 2 2-tank boat trips/day; you could get 4 dives/day in that way. They have a boat operating out of Christiansted (not a shore diving site), and one out of Frederiksted (which has the legendary pier as a shore dive).

It's also not a huge island; you could stay at Christiansted and dive with S.C.U.B.A. 4 dives/day a few days, then move to Carambola or Cane Bay and knock out some shore dives, then drop down to Frederiksted for the pier shore diving and more consistently calm waters boat diving down there. N2TheBlue is a popular op. that could supply shore & boat diving out of Frederiksted.

I'm not suggesting you ditch Roatan for it, but hey, maybe next time!

Richard.

 

[scubamickey]

I hope you have a great time on Roatan; I suspect you'll won't be fully content till you satisfy your curiosity about it.

For future reference, considering a destination where multiple dives/day, shore diving and tech. diving are all possibilities, St. Croix could fill the bill. The north coast should offer you technical depths, and I keep reading good things about Sweet Bottom Dive Center (they support technical diving) at Carambola Renaissance Resort, located by Davis Bay, which is said to offer shore diving with shorter swim outs than Cane Bay. I believe they use St. Croix Ultimate Blue Water Adventure (S.C.U.B.A.) for boat service (providing a Sweet Bottom guide along with you); S.C.U.B.A. is another dive op. and of course you could book directly with them, although near as I can tell S.C.U.B.A. doesn't support shore diving. People talk about seeing sharks off the north wall, if that's a draw. Technically you wouldn't be leaving the country, of course.

Last I checked S.C.U.B.A. offers 2 2-tank boat trips/day; you could get 4 dives/day in that way. They have a boat operating out of Christiansted (not a shore diving site), and one out of Frederiksted (which has the legendary pier as a shore dive).

It's also not a huge island; you could stay at Christiansted and dive with S.C.U.B.A. 4 dives/day a few days, then move to Carambola or Cane Bay and knock out some shore dives, then drop down to Frederiksted for the pier shore diving and more consistently calm waters boat diving down there. N2TheBlue is a popular op. that could supply shore & boat diving out of Frederiksted.

I'm not suggesting you ditch Roatan for it, but hey, maybe next time!

Richard.

Hey, not tickets or reservation have been made. I'm still in the searching stage. I'm going to take a look at St. Croix. I've toyed with Roatan for years and always ended up somewhere else. So, who knows. It's still early in the game and a big factor is where the airline miles take me Thank you for the detailed advice. I'm definitely looking at it.

 

[Doc]

No reservations yet made for CCV for May 2018?

Good luck on that, then. Your decision may have already been made.

 

[Damselfish]

Ugh. Miles aside, hard to imagine spending 30+ hours traveling from Alaska to Roatan, or anyplace in the Caribbean, when you could probably be so many places in the Pacific in less time. Have you considered getting one ticket on miles and buying the other? Depends what airline, but if you could get to say the Philippines it's inexpensive once there and that might make it a wash dollarwise.

 

[Lorenzoid]

No reservations yet made for CCV for May 2018?

Good luck on that, then. Your decision may have already been made.

And yet I would wager there is space available at AKR.

 

[Doc]

And yet I would wager there is space available at AKR.

And every other resort. Hmmm.

 

[scubamickey]

No reservations yet made for CCV for May 2018?

Good luck on that, then. Your decision may have already been made.

No luck needed. I contacted them yesterday and they have availability. Not a problem. Plenty of rooms for my dates.

 

[scubamickey]

Ugh. Miles aside, hard to imagine spending 30+ hours traveling from Alaska to Roatan, or anyplace in the Caribbean, when you could probably be so many places in the Pacific in less time. Have you considered getting one ticket on miles and buying the other? Depends what airline, but if you could get to say the Philippines it's inexpensive once there and that might make it a wash dollarwise.

Nope, not less time. It's not closer to us. It takes over 30 hrs. I don't know why people always think Alaska is closer to South Pacific. Must be those maps where they put us down next to Hawaii
But seriously, I've already looked. Tickets are very expensive and it's not a wash. Not for 2 weeks. Plus the unrest there is a bit of a turnoff. We just had friends return from diving there and they said even puerto galera is on high alert.

 

[scubamickey]

And yet I would wager there is space available at AKR.

What do you hate about AKR ? I have seen many negative reviews. I don't care about the food or the quality of the room. Is there an issue with the dive operation?

 

[jbjclj]

We have been to both places and Utila. Sorry but never again. My husband is a bug magnet and whatever he used didn't work. It's not worth the aggravation.
Coco View was fine. Very rustic and dive oriented. We are not big macro so, we didn't appreciated the "front yard" as much as many do.
The 2 for 1 drew us back to AKR and it was a great value. We opted for the Key Deluxe and it was wonderful. Great beds, wifi was spotty, very charming location.
Boats at both resorts were great and the dive personnel wonderful.
If not for the bugs, we would go back to AKR. But we go to Cozumel for 2 months each year and it is lots easier, better food and diving