Blogs from Roatán, Bay Islands, Honduras, Central America Caribbean - page 5

Thursday 14thFebruary: Roatan, Honduras. We sailed into Coxen Hole Roatan just after daybreak after an overnight journey directly east from Belize City, and it was very nice to see green hills again after the totally flat scenery of Mexico, Louisiana and Belize. Roatan is a small island with an interesting history having been under British rule/occupation before it was exchanged for Belize. Consequently, many of the communities still have English names e.g. Coxen Hole is named after a 16th Century English pirate John Coxen. Henry Morgan and Edward Teach (Blackbeard) also based themselves in Roatan at various times. It’s very small, only 20 miles long and on average a mile wide. After docking we walked off the ship to see how much the taxis would charge to take us to a resort in the north of ... read more

After a lovely sea day cruising past Cuba, we arrived in Grand Cayman. We were just about to go off the ship and do a little snorkeling when the skies opened up and it rained buckets. We waited for quite a while and then it got too close to the Riviera’s departure time so we just enjoyed the day on the ship. We have been to Cayman a number of times and have always gone swimming with the manta rays. We were sorry to miss them this time. When we anchored off Cozumel it was raining again but fortunately it let up long enough for us to take a stroll around town and find a nice family restaurant which served up some pretty good food --Mexican, of course. The first two weeks of December are traditionally ... read more

12 19 2012 Roatan Dive 12. Mating eels We had a late start. I missed my deadline for Ocean Views. The system took my payment but not the uploads. We dove the Coco View West Wall once again. Steve spotted sargassum on the surface. I grabbed a piece and I noticed a weird shrimp on it. I bolted off to grab SK fin and I guess I lost the shrimp with the current. I grab another piece and It had 3 shrimp in it: a sargassum shrimp, a stripped clear one and a tiny whiny one. I tried to hold it steady for SK but the surge was moving us not even holding my breath. I took them a little deeper but the water was a bit disturbed and it was difficult to focus. I hope ... read more

Steven Kovacs and Judy Townsend let me use these image for the blog to match the story. I decided to do a special post just with them. Two different species of wire coral shrimp. Wow!... read more

2012 12 16 Roatan Dive 1. Check out dive. Coco View has a mandatory rule for new divers: Assist an orientation meeting where they talk about all the rules and procedures, watch a 24 min video that is pretty informative and they top it off with a check out dive and there is no way out of it. I was assigned to a group of about 7 divers all pretty average except for one that kept going up and down to the point that had every body worried. I signaled the DM that I would stay with the group and waited for him while he ascended and assisted him. We went to the left from the entrance towards the Coco View wall. I saw a couple of Hamlets, a lime green mantis (My friend Judy took ... read more