Overview

On November 20th 2022 I discovered for myself why so many of my fellow divers have been raving about CoCo View Resort, on the island of Roatan off the coast of Honduras. The resort boasts the best (and the most) diving on the island. They have amazing staff, who have been there for years, and they offer unlimited shore diving in addition to two boat trips per day to dive the offshore reefs.

Dive Operator & Experience

I can not say enough good things about the dive operation at CoCo View Resort. This is a resort for divers, you come here for the diving. I would describe the experience as “summer-camp for divers”.

Dive Sites & Conditions

Conditions were fantastic above and below the surface—right up to the last day. On Friday it was raining with distant lightening, and fairly rough surface conditions. We didn’t dive on Friday morning as a result. This turned out to be a blessing because with all the rain it took forever to get our gear fully dry and ready to pack back up for the flight home. Visibility underwater was in the 100-foot range for all the rest of the days though. It couldn’t have been better, and was an amazing introduction to Roatan.

Here’s the list of sites we dove:

  1. Saturday:
    • no diving
  2. Sunday:
    • Front Yard
    • Forty Foot Point
    • CCV Wall
  3. Monday:
    • Wreck of the Mister Budd
    • Newman’s Wall
    • Gold Chain Reef
    • CCV Wall
  4. Tuesday:
    • Patty’s Paradise
    • Newman’s Wall
    • Big French Cay Cut
    • Minagerhea’s Reef (night dive)
  5. Wednesday:
    • Marco’s Place (shark dive)
    • Mary’s Place
  6. Thursday:
    • Harold’s Hotel
    • Minagerhea’s Reef
    • Neverstain Bight
    • Newman’s Wall
  7. Friday:
    • no diving

Dive Log

I am posting this a little over a year after the trip, and I didn’t keep great notes on each day’s diving while there at CCV. So I can’t give a whole lot of info on each day’s diving, unfortunately. I’ll try and mention the items that have stuck with me since the trip. You’ll probably get more out of watching the video of the dive highlights than reading each day’s description.

Sunday — Day 1

The first dive we did at CoCo View was the “orientation” dive. This is arranged before any boat trips, and serves a few purposes. First, its meant to give people a chance to make sure their weighting is correct, and their equipment is functional. Second, there is a guide who takes the group on a tour of the “Front Yard”. This is the area just in front of the resort. There is a shallow grassy area, that leads out to a channel. On either side of the channel there are two walls that run out for a good distance. The bottom of the channel reaches 100 feet, and the tops of the walls are about 25-40 feet deep with some parts reaching all the way up to the surface. The last thing the orientation dive does, is it gives the staff a chance to get a sense of the skill levels of the new guests. For anyone returning to CoCo View the orientation dive is optional and can be skipped in favor of going out on your own. In the afternoon we went out on the boat for the first time, and we went to a site called Forty Foot Point. After that dive, we had a “swim-home” which is a dive where they drop you off at the start of one of the two walls that lead back to the resort, and you swim back, returning via the shore entrance in the Front Yard.

Monday — Day 2

Day two of diving involved two boat dives, each followed by a swim-home dive. Our morning dive was on the wreck of the Mr. Budd—a small ship that sank in a sandy basin right next to the reef and wall. It sits in about 65 feet of water. If it had gone a little farther when sinking, it would have gone past the wall and been deeper than recreational scuba depths. Where it sits though, is perfect for a combo wreck/wall/reef dive. We did the swim-home on Newman’s Wall. In the afternoon we dove at Gold Chain Reef. This was an absolutely gorgeous site; full of lettuce coral and yellow pencil coral. Scattered amongst that were clusters of stag-horn and a few elk-horn corals. This was the most scenic and beautiful reef I’ve probably every dived on in the Caribbean. The swim-home dive afterwards was CoCo View wall. Of the two walls back to the resort, CCV wall is longer. But I think I found Newman’s wall to be more attractive.

Tuesday — Day 3

I don’t recall too much about the dives on our third day. I do remember we found a bearded toad fish at Patty’s Paradise. Otherwise it was nice diving and we didn’t have any issues. What really stands out in my mind on this day was the night dive. This was my first night dive! We dove at Minagerhea’s Reef (pronounced like menagerie) which isn’t far from the resort. We stayed on the top of the reef, the max depth was 35 feet, and the average was just 22 feet. You don’t need to go deep on a night dive. We saw a couple of octopus, and several reef fish sleeping and with their night coloration. I learned on this dive that many fish change their coloration at night, often becoming more patterned or striped to try to better camouflage while they sleep. Fish are cool.

Wednesday — Day 4

SHARK DIVE! On Wednesday morning Becca and I left CoCo View to go on a side excursion for a dedicated shark dive. This is a dive where they bring a bucket with a piece of fish in it. The local sharks have learned this routine, and they start to gather when they hear the boat approaching. The sharks swim around very calm and patient and we are permitted to swim amongst them. Then the dive guide has us go to a safe location a bit away from the bucket and he opens it. The sharks then swarm in, in a rush to try and get the piece of fish. As soon as the fish is gone, the sharks disperse, going back to whatever they were doing before we arrived. This was a really amazing experience. There were about a dozen Caribbean reef sharks, and almost as many large groupers. There were also some other fish hoping to get a piece of the action such as jacks and snappers.

We returned to CCV in time to get some lunch and hop on the boat for the afternoon dive. We went to Mary’s Place, which has a really cool crack in the reef that you can swim through. It feels like being in a cavern, but if you look up, you can see that the top is open and if you needed to, you could easily get out.

Thursday — Day 5

This ended up being our final dive day, since Friday was rained-out. Like the dives on Tuesday, I don’t recall many real standout moments from these dives. We found a sleeping nurse shark at the bottom of the wall at Harold’s hotel, and there was a good-sized black grouper—or possibly a yellowfin grouper—on our final swim-home dive in the afternoon.

Photos & Videos

Here are a bunch of photos from the trip.