Scuba Diving in Roatan, Honduras
I’ve been ‘waterlusting’ for some scuba in my life for a while now, so I was beyond ecstatic when we decided to head down to Honduras for a dive trip. We stayed at the Turquoise Bay resort, a lovely beach front property which conveniently has a PADI dive shop on site.
Roatan is home to the world’s second largest coral reef next to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. As you can imagine, the underwater world of Roatan is gorgeous! The water is crystal clear and warm, making a wetsuit-less entry less shocking to the system.
As we descended some 40-50 feet and acclimatized to the depth to get our bearings, I noticed just how vibrant and vivid the underwater scenery was: giant purple cones of coral with wispy, willowy creatures played peek-a-boo with the current; electric blue and lime green schools of fish dodged around us, with the odd particularly brave one swimming along side us.
We negotiated around walls and squeezed through cracks inside the coral labyrinth we found ourselves in. We were even lucky enough to swim amidst a giant eagle ray!
We went to Roatan super eager to do a night dive and a shark dive – unfortunately NEITHER of those happened. I had completed most of my PADI open water training back in Canada and was excited to complete my referral dives and have my open water certificate done!! For those not familiar with PADI training: you can do the pool component at your local dive shop, and then take the completed referral with you on your vacation; then all you need to do is finish your open water dives and you’re good to go! Well…little did I know the referral actually expires after a year!!!! It had been just over a year and I could no longer use my referral! I was so disappointed I couldn’t get certified, but I knew it was my own fault for not reading the fine print more carefully.
Although we were still able to dive every day with an instructor, because I was not certified, I could not do the night dive. The week that we stayed in Roatan had some of the darkest nights due to the low moon period of the lunar cycle, meaning an underwater dive would have yielded vivid bioluminescent activity among the underwater life, as well deliver a surreal and somewhat eerie experience. I was also told that in order to do a shark dive, you need to have your advanced open water training! – Oh well, I guess this just means I will have to get cracking on my open water certification (again!) and plan another scuba diving trip soon!
Heading to Roatan? | Check out this Traveller’s Guide to Honduras
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