I had previously posted a thread on here about advice on going to Roatan for a last minute diving trip with my girlfriend in this thread: http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/bay-islands/316824-going-fantasy-island-roatan-dec-28-jan-4-a.html Many thanks to all those that contributed. As mentioned we booked the trip just a few days before flying out on the 28th of December. We flew direct from Toronto with Sunwing, no problems although we got hit with extra luggage charge of course because of all the dive gear.
We did 6 days of diving including 1 night dive, 1 shore dive and 14 boat dives for a total of 16 dives. Everything was nice and smooth with the diving, no problems there. The operations is good, I was pleased with the divemasters we had who were Daren and Derry - both nice guys, helpful and pointed out the interesting things to us. We did a variety of sites (some more than once) including Mary's Place and the Prince Albert of course. I wanted to do Insedious Reef as I heard it was a good site but its also the furthest site and the captains and divemasters didn't seem keen to go out so far. Most of the dive sites on the South side were similar I thought with the exception of a few, no big pelagic fish (we knew this already) but healthy corals (the best I've seen in the Caribbean so far probably) and interesting critters (seahorses, nudibranch, etc.) and marine life (eels, octopus, squid, lobster, crabs, scorpionfish, etc.). The night dive was at Valley of the Kings and we enjoyed that a lot with multiple crabs, lobsters and octopus sightings. I would like to try the North side next time to get more variety however and get a chance to see big pelagic fish, rays, turtles, sharks, etc although we had seen all those before in Florida and the Turks and Caicos islands.
The resort itself was nice enough, we had no problems with the room and the food was decent enough (I've had worse in much higher star-rated hotels). Nothing to complain about except the sand flies - holy did we get eaten alive!! Water was very warm - I dove in a 2mm shorty and never once got cold or uncomfortable. Weather wasn't so great as we got quite a few cloudy days and rain but not a problem - we came from Canada after all!!
I'll keep it short so here are some of my favorite shots (using my p&s Lumix TZ5 with magic filter attached (which is good for shallow shooting but not so great for deep/low-light and more cloudy days), no flash/strobe used on any shots, ran through photoshop):
Cheers!
We did 6 days of diving including 1 night dive, 1 shore dive and 14 boat dives for a total of 16 dives. Everything was nice and smooth with the diving, no problems there. The operations is good, I was pleased with the divemasters we had who were Daren and Derry - both nice guys, helpful and pointed out the interesting things to us. We did a variety of sites (some more than once) including Mary's Place and the Prince Albert of course. I wanted to do Insedious Reef as I heard it was a good site but its also the furthest site and the captains and divemasters didn't seem keen to go out so far. Most of the dive sites on the South side were similar I thought with the exception of a few, no big pelagic fish (we knew this already) but healthy corals (the best I've seen in the Caribbean so far probably) and interesting critters (seahorses, nudibranch, etc.) and marine life (eels, octopus, squid, lobster, crabs, scorpionfish, etc.). The night dive was at Valley of the Kings and we enjoyed that a lot with multiple crabs, lobsters and octopus sightings. I would like to try the North side next time to get more variety however and get a chance to see big pelagic fish, rays, turtles, sharks, etc although we had seen all those before in Florida and the Turks and Caicos islands.
The resort itself was nice enough, we had no problems with the room and the food was decent enough (I've had worse in much higher star-rated hotels). Nothing to complain about except the sand flies - holy did we get eaten alive!! Water was very warm - I dove in a 2mm shorty and never once got cold or uncomfortable. Weather wasn't so great as we got quite a few cloudy days and rain but not a problem - we came from Canada after all!!
I'll keep it short so here are some of my favorite shots (using my p&s Lumix TZ5 with magic filter attached (which is good for shallow shooting but not so great for deep/low-light and more cloudy days), no flash/strobe used on any shots, ran through photoshop):
Cheers!
