BootsnAll Travel Community

hey--i live in portland OR and it is raining...and cold...and windy... and there is a big cloud hovering, ready to cry.
i want to take a trip down to central america to go snorkeling or scuba diving. any recomendations? does anyone have some good stories or armchair-travel-food-for-thought for a very slumpy dreary portlander?
books/blogs/websites to check out for good scuba/snorkeling planning?

thanks!

I feel your pain brother. I'm in Ohio, which is basically Portland with the cold and drear, but no scenerey, night life, mountains...hell, you're making me depressed.

Anyhow. I was in CA last year and did some diving/snorkeling in Roatan. I expect that you are going to get some replies here telling you that the Bay Islands of Honduras including Roatan are great for underwater pursuits. But I ask you to reconsider. The water has great visibility, but not much life. I did entire dives and didn't see a single fish - no exaggeration. I couldn't believe it. Sad really.

I've heard great things about Belize. Never been, but if I were you that's where I'd start my research.

No fish??? Well, that certainly wasn't the Roatan that I dove. That was this past March. Maybe you had bad dive leaders. Anyway, I would say the Bay Islands are great for marine life. I prefer Utila over Roatan.

If you go to Belize the diving around Ambegris Cay is pretty beat up. I would go further south. The sites that are closer to the blue hole were great.

And the cold is setting in here and I need to think about doing some warmer water diving. Bonaire is looking good for late spring for me.

I think Kelsey's experience in Roatan is a bit atypical. Not to say plenty of people don't come back disappointed from the Bay Islands...but the same can be said for any other place in the region (or on the planet, for that matter). It's hard to consider any place a sure thing - especially since, as scubamama suggests, there are always other factors involved.

In the case of Belize, I've had friends tell me the Blue Hole was the most magical dive of their lives; others have complained that it's too expensive and too short a dive to be bothered with. In general, one thing that CAN be said with certainty is that diving in Belize will cost you much more than in Honduras - both in terms of the diving, and in terms of the cost of staying there. For many, that's a deciding factor in and of itself.

I hope my experience in Roatan was atypical. It was rather depressing - a bunch of divers hovering around a single parrot fish, which was the only fish we had seen the entire dive.

I am not exaggerating. It was that bad. I've had more eventful dives in stone querries in Ohio. The vis was great, the water was warm, and there were some nice coral structure, but no fish.

I was there in July of '05. Anyone been there since that can give us a report?

I dove in Utila in February of 2005 and saw lots of fish and healthy coral- I dove there in March of 2006 and was amazed at the lack of fish and coral - I don't know what was going on.

Belize- Placencia area was wonderful- it is a much longer boat ride out to the dive spots but the diving was phenomenal- we went to Laughingbird Caye and Silk Caye- great.

I have dove in Belize many many times. Truly an amzing experience. One of my best friends owns a dive operation in San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, Belize. (He is originally from Eugene, still wears a duck hat!) [URL=www.ambergriscayediving.com ]www.ambergriscayediving.com [/URL] Good people....

Belize is a bit more expensive than honduras but the 2nd biggest barrier reef is worth every penny. There is possibilities for cheap lodging/food.

For scuba at the Sapodilla Cayes in Southern Belize check out ReefCI's diving conservation holidays.

Belize is awesome for diving. I dove and snorkelled around Glover's Reef. There are so many reefs and atolls there..so many to choose from. Also, depending on your skill level, there are some advanced dives as well -- cave dives, deep water dives. I stuck to the dives under 60 feet, though.

Ok, I don't snorkel or scuba... I can't even swim. (So insert grain of salt here.) I know both these activities are available on Little Corn Island in Nicaragua, which is an absolutely fantastic place to visit on land. So Little Corn might be a place you want to ask about among people who know about these things. ...maybe someone else can chime in?

honduras, bay islands, utila...
i was diving there feb. 2006 for 1 month... i loved the diving and the people...ill be going back for another month (probably april) favorite dive there: night dive to the haliburton wreck...

Bocas del Toro in Panama is also nice for snorkeling (don't know about scuba, haven't gotten certified yet but hopefully soon!) Bocas is a pretty fun and different place, and the excursions were fairly cheap and super easy to find. I've also heard good things about the corn islands, but they are much more remote than Bocas, Bay Islands or Belize so I would keep that in mind as well (nothing wrong with remote at all, just a matter of what kind of trip you're looking for). Good luck!

Bay Islands are pretty much indisputed as the best affordable diving in Central America. Don't know Roatan, or Guanaja, but Utila felt like paradise to me. I did my advanced OW course there, and stuck around for another 10 dives afterward. Packages of ten dives were $200 two years ago, and courses about the same. There's a good chance you'll see whale sharks diving around the islands - they are unbelievably huge.

Cozumel, Mexico has the most fish, but is more expensive. Diving in Belize is expensive, like everything else. I dove on Terneffe Reef this January, which was spectacular. That's because it's on the same barrier reef as the Bay Islands, making it hard for anyone on a budget to choose Belize over Honduras.

Visibility in Bocas del Toro, Panama, is really variable. There are a lot of rivers dumping silt around the archipelago, making vis really bad sometimes. When I was there, it was barely 5m - not really worth it. I've heard that Isla Coiba, on the Pacific side of Panama, is the best diving on the Pacific Side of CA. I've only done that in Costa Rica, from Playa del Coco. After Cozumel and the Bay Islands, I found it underwhelming.

I did a two tank dive in Belize (near Ambergris Caye) and thought it was "okay." The Blue Hole is interesting, but I was a little underwhelmed. I think I allowed my expectations to get too high, plus we had not-so-great visibility that day. If you like seeing sharks on your dive, you won't be disappointed at the Blue Hole. While it's not Central America, I enjoyed diving in Cozumel more than Belize.

Utilla's good but Glovers was better. I too had very mixed experiences in the bay Islands but Glovers and Tobacco Caye in Belize were excellent! Everyone in Belize says "Hol-Chan and Shark Ray Alley!" but the reef there was pretty crowded and wrecked up. Snorkeling OR scuba diving is way less fun with two dozen other people around you in my opinion. Great shore snorkeling from Tobacco (loads of eagle and sting rays, giant schools of 7 foot tarpin, eels, turtles, etc.) and it's easy to get fairly inexpensive rides to other parts of the reef and Glovers. Bocas sounds sweet and I'm thinking about checking it out late January. Maybe I'll see you down there.