Aruba	The Bay Islands are located off the coast of Honduras. Three main islands anchor this island chain: Guanaja, Roatan, and Utila, with Roatan being the largest. While all locations provide very good diving, Roatan is the one that provides a combination of excellent diving and comfortable accommodations. Guanaja and Utila have been described as very crude and rustic thus the diver’s place of choice is Roatan.     Once there, the cost to stay on Roatan is the cheapest I’ve found. Diving, food, and drink are very reasonable and portions abundant. While most of the civil unrest is in Honduras proper, caution should be taken when traveling in Roatan too. Yes, there are very hungry mosquitoes and sand fleas on the island … Bring Insect Repellants!
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   Roatan in one word

-- Bottom Time --

    A very shallow reef structure allows for an extended bottom time dives. You can stretch your dives incredibly long to enjoy the diving experience. It’s not uncommon for depths to reach as shallow as 15-20 feet, allowing for awesome coral and fish life. Teeming schools of fish are everywhere. Shrimp, crab and lobster hide in every nook and cranny feeding on the sea life growing on the shallow reefs.

    The dive sites are within 20 minutes, depending on your hotel location, with few wall diving opportunities off the west end. The dive operations have a variety of dive boats from 22’ open bows to 40’ cabin cruisers.

    One of the most enjoyable dive sites was the El Aguila, a sunken ship that serves as an artificial reef. This wreck sits in 70’of water sunken adjacent to a shallow 20’ reef. Descending towards the bottom an image appears, growing larger as you get closer, finally blossoming into a 200’ perfectly intact ship (hurricane Mitch broke the ship into three large parts). It’s quit a sight. Open to "swim thrus" and having full decks, provided a safe wreck dive for all skill levels of divers. After a 30-minute tour, you accend to 20’, tour the reef for the remainder of the 65-minute dive profile. A good time will be had by all.

(Captured on video)

    The night dive provided my first showing of bio-luminance. Few locations provide such a light show, it looked like thousands of fireflies fluttering throughout the water. Sparks everywhere, very cool!

    A day trip was planned to visit on outer island of Cios Cochinos (Cochinos Caye) on the Bay Island Aggressor to do some wall diving where purple tunicates thrives. These look like purple bell-shaped flowers, very fragile and beautiful. While there, schooling Ocean Triggers and Atlantic Spadefish were encountered.

(Captured on video)

Well worth the effort to make the trip.

Rating (4 Flags)

High Points:

Excellent Diving   ***   Excellent schooling fish

Short dive boat trips  ****    Very nice wreck diving

Inexpensive to stay

Lessor Points:

Those dam sand fleas!

No sandy beaches (Sand fleas won’t let you enjoy them anyway)

Bit of a hassle to get there (some bags were lost)

No nightlife

Rustic & rural surroundings

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