octgal
Contributor
Hola y'all well, i just returned from Roatan last week and thought I'd post a wee trip report of my week. Unfortunately it won't be as entertaining as my Cave Intro report, but incase anyone is interested in Roatan, thought i'd pass on my thoughts.
I stayed at Fantasy Island Resort. Now, to start off, i must say i would have perferred to spend the week deep in some dark cave as i am now a hard core totally addicted cave diver, but I still looked forward to my week of OW diving and i wasn't dissappointed in the least. This was the best OW diving i have ever done. Roatan has some great wall diving and the coral reefs were in GREAT condition!!! The marine life i came across was absoltely amazing. I did my first Ocean night dive, and i was really excited for this! I was leading the dive for my group on this and we came across a crashed DC-3 aircraft, as someone that works in aviation i certianly found this cool, i was also aware of some ship wreck that was in the area so after the airplane off we went to find it. Now my previous shipwreck expierence has been in Bermuda where all the wrecks have been eaten away by the salt water and hardly reconizable as even a boat, well as we were coming up on this boat in the dark i could not believe its size!!! I was like OMG its Titanic LOL Ok not quite but compare to what i was expecting and it being night and all, it looked huge!!! Just amazing, eery looking at night and tons of marine life living on it. We had a nice BIG grouper follow us the entire dive which was cool and i also noticed the biggest Barracuda i have ever seen stalking us in the dark the whole dive too I saw some squid, lobsters, crab, you name it we saw it.....and the highlight of my entire trip came at the end of this dive...i saw my first OCTOPUS
ctopus: !!!!! I almost cried in my mask when i saw it, it has been a dream of mine to see one, i could not believe my luck!! The best OW dive ever!!
I also tried out shark diving on this trip. I would be lying if I said i wasn't REALLY scared on the boat ride out to the site. I kept thinking, what on earth have you signed up for this time????? Why do i always sign up for stuff then think about it after???lol Once i was in the water, i didn't think about it. We had strict instructions on this dive on the procedures and if one person broke them, that was it for the dive. We had to follow a line down to a certain spot and all line up in front of this wall of coral and kneel on the sandy bottom. WELL i was wearing a shorty (DO NOT reccomend this for shark diving) and cut myself on the floor as soon as i got down! GOOD....just GREAT wendy, its always good to be gushing blood when you are swimming with 30 black tip sharks!!!!!!
ahhh well. We watched all the sharks swim around us for a few minutes, and they got really close too, at one point i turned around and looked at the coral wall behind me and noticed a little cave with the glow of BIG teeth inside!! WOW the largest grouper i have ever seen, but i wasn't about to move around at that point so i hoped he didn't mind my presence Next we were allowed to swim with the sharks....we were all a little nervous at first, but what a great expierence, a large female seemed to be perticularly interested in my leg i noticed and continued to get closer and closer to me, and singled me out from the crowd and began to circle around me over and over...closer and closer, yeah I became a little concerned, when i managed to get away (not gracefully either as i noticed on the video later) i decide to just stick with the fat guy for the rest of the dive and i would be fine HAHAHAHA. My bleeding had stopped by the time we were swimming with them, but I'm sure she smelled something there!
Those were the highlights, saw some great Moray Eels that came out to play when my group swam by and i at least got my cave fix by swimming through some nice swim throughs. Not sure if there are any caves in Roatan, some of the sites had the word "cave" in them, however most of them sounded like 100 foot swim throughs. But hey that would have done just fine for moi
I would reccomend Roatan to anyone looking for a week of great OW diving. Our dive operation was GREAT and i was really impressed how they ran it. Met some wonderful people last week and the momories will stay with me forever.
Well thats about it, if you have any questions, please ask away!
Wendy
I stayed at Fantasy Island Resort. Now, to start off, i must say i would have perferred to spend the week deep in some dark cave as i am now a hard core totally addicted cave diver, but I still looked forward to my week of OW diving and i wasn't dissappointed in the least. This was the best OW diving i have ever done. Roatan has some great wall diving and the coral reefs were in GREAT condition!!! The marine life i came across was absoltely amazing. I did my first Ocean night dive, and i was really excited for this! I was leading the dive for my group on this and we came across a crashed DC-3 aircraft, as someone that works in aviation i certianly found this cool, i was also aware of some ship wreck that was in the area so after the airplane off we went to find it. Now my previous shipwreck expierence has been in Bermuda where all the wrecks have been eaten away by the salt water and hardly reconizable as even a boat, well as we were coming up on this boat in the dark i could not believe its size!!! I was like OMG its Titanic LOL Ok not quite but compare to what i was expecting and it being night and all, it looked huge!!! Just amazing, eery looking at night and tons of marine life living on it. We had a nice BIG grouper follow us the entire dive which was cool and i also noticed the biggest Barracuda i have ever seen stalking us in the dark the whole dive too I saw some squid, lobsters, crab, you name it we saw it.....and the highlight of my entire trip came at the end of this dive...i saw my first OCTOPUS
ctopus: !!!!! I almost cried in my mask when i saw it, it has been a dream of mine to see one, i could not believe my luck!! The best OW dive ever!!I also tried out shark diving on this trip. I would be lying if I said i wasn't REALLY scared on the boat ride out to the site. I kept thinking, what on earth have you signed up for this time????? Why do i always sign up for stuff then think about it after???lol Once i was in the water, i didn't think about it. We had strict instructions on this dive on the procedures and if one person broke them, that was it for the dive. We had to follow a line down to a certain spot and all line up in front of this wall of coral and kneel on the sandy bottom. WELL i was wearing a shorty (DO NOT reccomend this for shark diving) and cut myself on the floor as soon as i got down! GOOD....just GREAT wendy, its always good to be gushing blood when you are swimming with 30 black tip sharks!!!!!!
ahhh well. We watched all the sharks swim around us for a few minutes, and they got really close too, at one point i turned around and looked at the coral wall behind me and noticed a little cave with the glow of BIG teeth inside!! WOW the largest grouper i have ever seen, but i wasn't about to move around at that point so i hoped he didn't mind my presence Next we were allowed to swim with the sharks....we were all a little nervous at first, but what a great expierence, a large female seemed to be perticularly interested in my leg i noticed and continued to get closer and closer to me, and singled me out from the crowd and began to circle around me over and over...closer and closer, yeah I became a little concerned, when i managed to get away (not gracefully either as i noticed on the video later) i decide to just stick with the fat guy for the rest of the dive and i would be fine HAHAHAHA. My bleeding had stopped by the time we were swimming with them, but I'm sure she smelled something there!Those were the highlights, saw some great Moray Eels that came out to play when my group swam by and i at least got my cave fix by swimming through some nice swim throughs. Not sure if there are any caves in Roatan, some of the sites had the word "cave" in them, however most of them sounded like 100 foot swim throughs. But hey that would have done just fine for moi
I would reccomend Roatan to anyone looking for a week of great OW diving. Our dive operation was GREAT and i was really impressed how they ran it. Met some wonderful people last week and the momories will stay with me forever.
Well thats about it, if you have any questions, please ask away!
Wendy
