Oh Roatan, you utter fucking budget murderer, you. My bank account is currently cowering in a corner, battered beyond all recognition. I think it might be weeping. We timed our trip to this glorious albeit expensive Caribbean island to coincide with when Karen who we met on the Antarctica cruise would be there. Oh, did I mention that we went to Antarctica? So that was lovely to catch up with her and to meet her equally lovely friends. Roatan is also pretty well known for diving so I fully intended to do some of that whilst Tarrant did things like laundry. Get yourself a woman that’ll scrub your pants in the sink whilst you’re off bothering fish.

It’s actually some great diving with similar coral to what I saw at Little Corn Island, but Little Corn wins because you’re pretty much guaranteed to see some nurse sharks. The first dive took us down to 28 metres at Butcher’s Bank where we did quite a lot of shrimp bothering. There were banded shrimp and pederson’s cleaner shrimp and some of them were so big it’s almost audacious to refer to them as shrimp. Our dive leader, Suzie, very much enjoyed pointing them out.

We also saw a massive puffer fish and a little stingray which we weren’t deliberately stalking, it just happened to be going our way. Poor bastard was just minding its own business when five bipeds pumping bubbles into the sea showed up and stared at it. Despite the depth we still managed an hour down there but I was right down to 750 PSI by the time we surfaced, which I suppose must be around 50 bar? Which is a much saner system with less zeros to think about. If I did more diving than I do then I’d definitely invest in my own kit so I could always dive metrically.

The second dive was at Seaquest Shallows, just a shallow 13.2 metre dive. We saw some cool fish but I’m not going to lie, I did expect a bit more marine life from a protected area like the Roatan Marine Park. The coral is stunning though, I can’t get over how beautiful that is and I do spend a lot of time with my face in that. Some of that shit must be hundreds of years old! They’re pretty shit hot on reef protection here too albeit to the detriment of my poor, tender flesh. They ask you not to enter the water with DEET or suncream on so I envision sunburn in my immediate future whilst the mozzies and sandflies feast on my sweet, sweet blood.

Night dives are currently one of my new favourite things to do so I got myself onto one of those. Again, maybe I’m unfairly comparing it to Little Corn where there was so much shit to see we didn’t know where to point our faces next, but I was surprised at how little there was. Don’t get me wrong, it was an excellent dive and I really enjoyed every minute of it apart from when we surfaced but I’ll get to that in a minute. We did see an octopus and I can pretty much watch them all night.

Gigi, the dive leader, switched her torch to strobe to indicate that she’d found something utterly badass, then she made the sign for octopus. I stared really hard. Gigi, that’s a rock, are you having a stroke, mate? But then I saw it! It was a reddish colour, pressing itself up against a stone until it got completely fed up of these excitable apes staring at it, then it moved to another rock, changing to white to match the sand as it went. We pretty much just stalked the poor fucker until it disappeared underneath a bit of seaweed then we wandered off to switch our torches off for a bit.

It was unfortunately a bit too light to see the strings of pearls that we saw on Little Corn but the pin pricks of bioluminescence that show up when you agitate the water were all over the place. Gigi swam up and down, making a big show of triggering the… the… whatever the fuck is it that makes the light. I’ll never get bored of that. We spent a bit of time in the dark before we headed back off with these tiny little fish going crazy for our lights, crashing into our hands and faces. Silly fish.

The surface though. Oh my fucking gosh, that was an experience. We’d been told there were jellyfish at the surface and they’d be attracted to the light but not one of us remembered to turn our lights off. They’re painful little fuckers, let me tell you. The little shit got me right in the tits but one of them got Gigi worse, bless her. She was in quite a lot of pain so she got onto the boat first and I followed, took off my rashie because I felt like it was still there, and the bastard was on my boob, just pulsating away.

Oh you utter, utter prick! No wonder it got me good if it was inside my top. We got covered in vinegar when we got back, it felt like getting a particularly brutal tattoo to me and the vinegar calmed it right down but poor Gigi, she somehow had it so much worse than me. I shuffled home smelling like a salad to shower and change into things that couldn’t be wrung out to season my chips then we headed to the house Karen and her friends were renting to have a couple of beers and hang out.

I went out for a couple more dives the next day too and it was some cracking diving! My camera died in the first five minutes of the first dive though so of course we saw a turtle which decided the best place to chomp on coral was literally right in fucking front of us. Oh man, it was so cool but now I have to rely on my awful memory rather than a lovely photograph. The dive site, called Mandy’s Eel Garden, obviously had a big expanse of garden eels poking their little heads out of the sand. Didn’t get a photo of that either.

The second dive though, that’s when the eagle rays showed up. I had my face in the coral when I realised they were trying to get my attention. Three of them were gliding over the reef, they were absolutely majestic. Then a fourth swam the other way and honestly, more eagle rays, please. I don’t think I’ve seen them before, I didn’t realise how amazing they were to watch. I’d have been happy with your bog standard stingray or two but these guys were a delight.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what made this dive site, Chris Fisher, my favourite but it absolutely was. The coral was particularly interesting, the fish were extra fun, and I spotted what is my new most favourite fish ever and is apparently called an indigo hamlet. I don’t recall seeing one before but the little bugger is my favourite colour and he certainly stands out against the yellows, creams and browns of the coral.

Our evening ended up being a write off thanks to some accidental day drinking. Fortunately I had no plans to dive the following day because I woke up feeling like I’d been turned inside out to dry. We had what we thought was a slow start before shuffling down to the water taxi to head to West Bay which apparently has a nicer beach. It’s infested with sandflies, but it’s still nicer. The water taxi made us wait a while, they wanted two more humans, but they did eventually just take us, pretty much just as we were considering fucking it off and heading to the beach at the front of Sundowners.

West Bay is absolutely a much nicer beach but I don’t think we made the most of it. Don’t get me wrong, we had a glorious afternoon on a sunbed, eating food and drinking Lipton iced tea. One of my absolute favourite things is people bringing me things to put in my facehole whilst I relax on a sunbed. Or sunlounger as our American friends call it, we only found this out when I mentioned a sunbed and they had no idea what I was banging on about.
“It’s a bed and you put it in the sun,” I told them, “I’m not sure how else to say it.”
“Yes but you also lounge on it in the sun,” was the response and yes, fair enough, but lounging implies a certain degree of grace and style, two things I absolutely lack. I just sort of, well, sprawl, but sunsprawler doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

We spent the afternoon there and the evening at Sundowners for the Thursday night quiz which is just for fun. It’s free, you listen to music and have to name the song and the artist. I’m pretty fucking useless with music, I don’t exactly have my finger on the pulse of popular music and if it’s not eighties or early nineties then I’m pretty much fuc….
“The theme for tonight is the eighties!” announced the quizmaster. Oh. Well. Jolly good. We absolutely smashed it. Alison and Todd, two of Karen’s friends, more or less carried the rest of us but I like to think that me and Tarrant made a healthy contribution. You don’t win anything but we did get to briefly hold a karate trophy which will probably be only only trophy I ever get my greasy little mitts on, like, ever so I’ll take it.

So Roatan was a pleasant surprise, I wasn’t sure if it’d be our vibe given the high end resorts and the plethora of cruise ships that spew their humans out here but it’s very chilled and has some great bars and grocery shops. It’s pricey, we’re so over budget I’m not even sure if we can bring it down, it’s the kind of place where they quote everything in dollars and I’m not even sure if that’s better or worse. I have an idea of what dollars mean in British pounds so I can get all my wincing out of the way before I hand over the cash. With lempiras I shed a tear once the money is spent and I check the conversion rate. For some reason I can’t get my head around the Honduran currency yet. I’d definitely come here again if I had a holiday budget though, rent a nice room with AC, go diving every day, drink a lot of monkey la las whilst yelling, “Shut up and take my money!” That sort of thing.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Roatan, Islas de la Bahía, Honduras

Stayed at: Hotel Chillis, West End

Useful shit to know…

How To Get From Copán Ruinas To La Ceiba

• The bus company Casasola runs small buses to San Pedro Sula every day at 4am, 6am and 7am from just outside of town.
• Head towards the ruins and once you’re past the “Feliz Viaje” arch you’ll see what looks like a bus depot on the right. The bus will stop opposite.
• Coordinates are 14.840611, -89.153056 if that helps.
• The bus left just after 6am. It cost L160 and took five hours but we hung around in La Entrada for over half an hour and I’ve no idea why.
• You’ll be dropped at Gran Central Metropolitana. Just walk inside and you’ll see a lot of ticket offices. There’s also a food court, shops and toilets. It’s pretty big.
• A few different companies go to La Ceiba from San Pedro Sula. We went with Diana Express.
• The bus was scheduled for 12.30pm but left at 1pm.
• It cost L180 each and took 4.5 hours so we arrived at the Terminal de Buses San Jose at 5pm. If we were hoping to get to Roatan or Utila today we’d have been far too late.
• There are a couple of convenient hotels right by the terminal if you’re staying in La Ceiba overnight. We went with Hotel El Dorado as you can book it through Booking.com. It has AC and hot showers and they’ll call you an overpriced taxi in the morning.
• Total cost: L340 (US$13.82) each.
• Total time: 11.5 hours including the wait at SPS.

How To Get From La Ceiba To West End, Roatan

• Ferrys to Roatan go at 9.30am and 4.30am.
• You need to get to the Galaxy Wave terminal at the far east end of town.
• It cost us L250 in a taxi from near the San Jose bus terminal which I think, from what I’ve read, is far too much but hey. It’s meant to be no more than L150.
• There are buses but I’m not sure how frequent or fast they are. You need to make your way to 15.784138, -86.792643, about 1.5 kilometres from Terminal San Jose.
• You can buy your ferry tickets online but the website states you need to then print them. We just showed up early and bought them there.
• It costs US$36, or L883 each. You can pay cash or card.
• When you exit the lovely, air conditioned ticket office you’ll see people stacking luggage to the right. Give them your big bags and they’ll give you a reclaim ticket.
• There are toilets inside the ticket office and places to get food and drink just outside the fence.
• You need to pay a port tax which is L35. As you exit the Galaxy Wave office, turn left, cross the zebra crossing and follow the the little yellow “Tasa Portuaria” sign to find the office where you pay.
• When entering the waiting area inside the Galaxy Wave office they’ll stamp your port tax receipt, check your ID, scan your ticket and give you a slip of paper with a group number on it.
• Your bag will be put through a scanner but your person won’t be scanned or searched.
• You’re called to board in your groups (in Spanish).
• We set off at 9.37am and it took about 90 minutes.
• You’ll be offered taxis when you disembark of course, I was told by several people including our accommodation to expect to pay US$30 to West End!
• As we walked towards the road we were offered a minibus for L40 (it’s meant to be L25) to Coxen Hole where we would have had to have changed but we wanted to secure our boat tickets to Utila so we had to go up to the road, turn left, then left again to get to the Utila Dream ticket office.
• After standing on the road for a bit we didn’t see another minivan but a guy offered to take us to Coxen Hole for US$5 each which we turned down. Another taxi pulled in, said he was a colectivo and he’d take us to West End for L300 which is just over US$12. We were happy to pay that rather than stand in the sun for much longer.

Diving With Reef Gliders

• I went with Reef Gliders purely because that’s who Karen dives with. I have zero regrets, they’re a great outfit with great staff.
• I spent a total of US$295 with them which breaks down as:
• $35 for a rashie, just because I was in the market for one anyway.
• $15 equipment rental.
• $10 marine park fee.
• $20 for Tarrant’s snorkelling.
• $40 per dive for the four day dives.
• $55 for the night dive.

West Bay

• There aren’t any buses to West Bay from West End but you can take a water taxi.
• Aim for 16.303415, -86.594058, you’ll see a sign.
• It’s US$5 each one way but they want a minimum of four people.
• If there are one or two of you they’ll take you for US$15 total.
• If you decline that offer after you’ve been waiting a while they might just take you for the $5 each.
• You might be offered a water taxi elsewhere along the beach for the same price.
• To get back just ask around, someone will help you find a boat.
• I believe this beach gets stupid busy on cruise days. I’ve also heard some places won’t rent out sunbeds on cruise days. You can check the schedule HERE.
• I can’t speak for the other places but Argentinian Grill lets you use their sunbeds for free as long as you spend US$10 each at the bar or restaurant. This is very easily done as they aren’t cheap but then nowhere in West Bay is. The food is great.

• English is very widely spoken in West End and West Bay.
• Pretty much everything is priced in dollars but you can only pay with dollars if they’re unmarked and untorn. Obviously lempiras are accepted.