Scuba Diving In Roatan & Utila Honduras – General Travel Information
Looking for a cheaper dive destination in the tropics but one that still has decent diving? One of the more affordable places to scuba dive in the Caribbean region is the Bay Islands of Roatan and Utila in Honduras. You may have heard that the central American country of Honduras is not a safe place to travel to and this might indeed be true of the mainland but not the Bay Islands. Both Roatan and Utila are quite safe and it is entirely possible to travel there without ever even stepping foot on the mainland.
Roatan is the more developed island and is very easy to travel to since it has an international airport. It is also a cruise ship port with two separate cruise ship terminals so it’s possible to visit Roatan and scuba dive even for a single day. Both cruise ship ports are on one side of the island while most of the hotel resort accommodations as well as dive shops are located on the other side. Fortunately the dive shops that do accommodate cruise ship passengers offer transportation from the cruise ship ports. Being on the other side of the island means that those staying on Roatan will not have to deal with the crush of cruise ship passengers while they are at port.
Getting to Utila is a bit more complicated as there are no direct flights there from international airports. You have to fly to Roatan first and then there are three different options to take to get to Utila. The cheapest way is to take a scheduled ferry from Roatan to La Ceiba which is on the Honduras mainland and this will take about 1.5 hours. There are no more scheduled ferries directly between Roatan and Utila. After getting to La Ceiba, you must transfer to another ferry from the same mainland port to get to Utila so taking two ferries altogether is quite time consuming.
A much faster option but more expensive is to take a small propeller plane from Roatan to Utila. The flight is only 15 minutes so is a real time saver. A third option but harder to find is to hire somebody with a fast boat who is willing to go between Roatan and Utila. During my trip to Roatan and Utila, I took the scheduled ferry services via La Ceiba to Utila but for the return trip back to Roatan, my dive shop in Utila arranged a fast boat connection which I gladly took in order to save the hassle from transferring on the mainland again. It was also a fun, bouncy fast boat ride all the way to Roatan!
Scuba Diving In Roatan & Utila
The scuba diving in Roatan and Utila are fairly similar with water temperatures 84-86 degrees F or 29-30 degrees C during the summer months. The winter months will have the water temperatures dip a bit to about 77-79 degrees F or 25-26 degrees C. The cost of diving at the Bay Islands will be much less compared to many higher priced Caribbean islands like Cayman Islands and the Bahamas.
Since Roatan is more developed, it does bring in general tourists as well so the cost of scuba diving there will be a bit higher compared to Utila (but still lower than many other destinations). Roatan does have a shark dive as well as a dolphin dive but keep in mind that these are not as well structured in my opinion compared to the same type of specialty dives in the Bahamas. This is especially the case with the dolphin dive which is run at Anthony Keys dolphin sanctuary as they do not have the same variety of interactions with the dolphins as the dolphin dives at Freeport in Grand Bahama Island. You do get to see and touch the dolphins underwater in Roatan but that’s about it. There won’t be any fancy tricks with them like they do in Freeport.
Here’s my video on Honduras diving. It shows typical marine life you would see when diving down there.
Utila is far less developed and does not usually get many general tourists as most of the international visitors in Utila will be scuba divers. Scuba diving costs on Utila will be among the most affordable in the Caribbean region and many divers go there to take courses including divemaster courses.
But with the extra hassles of travelling to Utila, one might ask why bother with Utila if one can just stay in Roatan?
Well if staying longer at the Bay Islands, the costs of accommodations and diving overall will be cheaper in Utila. And there is a whale shark season there as well with February to April being the best months to see whale sharks in the waters. This can be hit and miss though as our dive shop Ecomarine Gunter’s spent three consecutive days searching for whale sharks in between dives for our group and we did not see one single one which was a huge disappointment for me as I hoped to finally see one. It won’t be until I dive in La Paz, Mexico in the Sea of Cortez when I actually do see my first whale shark. I subsequently saw five whale sharks during my Galapagos trip.
There was however an interesting dive where we were alerted in advance that there might be a ‘psycho’ moray eel who actually goes after divers. Indeed during this dive I actually saw a moray eel leave the rocks and swim in open water right towards me. This is the first time anything in the water has actually targeted me on purpose. When it got close, I simply kicked my fins in its face like I was instructed to by our divemasters and the eel went after somebody else. But throughout the rest of this exciting dive, we were all watching in all directions where this moral eel might be!
However, it was nice overall to at least try out the diving at both islands during my first trip there. I did three days of diving in Utila and one in Roatan. I would have liked to dive more of Roatan next time I’m down there.
If you want to take in the best dive sites at both Roatan and Utila without any hassles of traveling in between the two islands, it is possible to take a liveaboard boat.
