Nancy Zupancic
A Day of Scuba Diving

The other ships in port with us were the Seaborne Legend and NCL Sea. We docked at the pier until about 11am when the NCL Sea comes into port. Then the Sun went out and used the tenders for the rest of the day. The Sea goes to Roatan year round while the Sun only goes during the main winter tourist season.

While in Roatan, the thing to do is to get out and enjoy the island. The port town of Coxen Hole is interesting but not very picturesque. I would imagine it is the worst part of Roatan. It is fairly poor and there are a few houses but mostly impoverished housing complete with open sewers. If you go on any tour you will get a drive through Coxen Hole so you won’t miss out.

We all took ship excursions this day. My mom and aunt went on a half day island tour. They seemed to go all over the place. It was probably over priced as most (all) shores excursions are, but they got out and saw a lot of areas including going out on a boat to see a ship wreck and they enjoyed it. My brother and his wife and son went to swim with the dolphins in the morning and then to Tabyana beach in the afternoon. Paula went on the Tabyana beach party and snorkel. Tabyana reminded of me very much of the beaches and offerings you would see on a cruise ship private island. A very nice beach with countless beach chairs and a barbeque. The dolphin swim was at Anthony’s Key Resort. All of them really liked their day.

My sister and I went scuba diving everyday except Cayman. The question is always “to go or not to go with the ship’s excursion”. After finding out that the ship used AKR (Anthony’s Key Resort) we decided to go with the ship. I would like to go to Roatan on a dive trip and AKR is somewhere I would like to stay so I wanted to check it out. On the excursion there was 24 people from the ship going on this excursion. They transferred us to the resort on a bus then we boarded two boats The Stingray and The Albacore. We were on the Albacore, they didn’t have a system of who went on what boats it seemed those of us at the front of the bus went on the Albacore. They were both beautiful Pro 48s. The albacore had 9 and the Stingray had about 15. The dive groups were about 4 or 5 people each. The ocean was rough the day we were visiting. All the regular reefs usually visited were not that good so they took us on the other side of Roatan. These reefs were on the same side where the ships were but we did not dive near the ships. The water on that side was like glass.

The first dive site was Pablo’s Place at about 80 feet for 30 minutes. It had beautiful corals huge sponges, a few huge lobsters and a very tame french anglefish that spent the safety stop with us. The second dive site was called Keyhole named after the formations in the reef. This was a drift dive over a beautiful reef. It was an easy 70 feet for 45 minutes. The main draw for me was a large grouper, again some great coral and sponges. This area was gorgeous. I am eager to make a return trip to see the other side of the island where the main dive sites are located. Once we finished our dives we went back the ship and we were tired and hungry so we just relaxed and didn’t go back into Coxen Hole. We watched the sunset from the balcony and just after that the ship set sail for Belize.

Check out over 5 different shore excursions in Roatan,
Roatan Shore Excursions

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