Tuesday July 21
On the morning of July 21, we departed Guatemala City and flew to Roatàn, Honduras. We flew TAG Airlines, which was a new airline for me, but it was direct, leaving just after noon and arriving just before 2 PM. It was a pretty easy flight, and we arrrived, collected our bags and collected our rental car. One thing I noticed on arrival was the Roatàn Airport was in various stages of rebuild. The Departure Hall was new and more / less complete, but the Arrivals was completely under contruction. This also extended out to the main road leaving the Airport and heading to the western part of the island. Clearly, the government was investing.
We got to our AirBnB just outside of West End and let ourselves in straight-away. We had a light bite at Guatemala City Airport, so we drove to West End for a bite at Beachers Bar & Grill. By the time we were done with transit, it was already 4:30 PM, so let’s just say we had an early dinner.
After a quick bite, we went to the grocery store across the road. We were excited to finally be in an AirBnB with a kitchen, and we were craving being able to cook our own meals. We must have chosen the most expensive grocery store on the island, but we brought back enough food for a couple of days. We booked this condo, as it was a 4-minute drive / 20-minute walk to West End, which is known for a main drag with a number of different restaurants. However, we also booked it as the listing said that we were able to access a ‘community pool’ during our stay. However, when asking for instructions and location, we were told by our host that there was no pool to access, and his best offer was going to cover a single day pass at a local resort, so we could use a private beach and pool – however, we were going to be on the island for 9 days. After a series of back and forths with the host, we told him we were going to pursue a different location. He was nice enough to not charge us for the single night since it was already well into evening, and we weren’t going to be able to find something else on that short of notice. We spent the evening looking, and settled on a house with a pool that was a 20-minute drive north, in Palmetto Bay. We booked that in, and went for a sleep.
Wednesday July 22
We had a quick breakfast at Yahongreh?, which was actually quite good (no website available). We headed back to the condo and packed our things. We were checking out at 11 AM, but couldn’t check into our new house until after 3 PM, so we caught up on some other shopping – I needed a new USB charger for my camera batteries.
We checked into our new house, got the bags in and got settled. It was a lovely house, with a nice open kitchen, and kitchen bar where I spent a lot of time catching up on admin work on my computer, and a bedroom downstairs and another upstairs. We wanted to get back to the grocery to get a few more things, since we changed houses. It was getting close to dinner time, and you never want to go to the grocery store hungry, so we stopped for tacos at LOTOS Grill, which was literally right on the water. The restaurant had a single BBQ, and picnic tables out back, overlooking the water. For a pretty low profile restaurant, they were probably among the best chicken tacos I’ve had. Full after tacos, we hit Eldon’s Grocery, and headed home to unpack. We pretty much just watched a show and decompressed the rest of the night.
Thursday July 23
We really didn’t do a whole lot on Thursday. I had coffee in the pool in the morning, made avocado & toast for breakfast. I caught up on downloading and editing some photos from the prior couple of weeks, and made sure we were paying our bills. My partner ended up laying by the pool later in the afternoon, once the pool was in the shade. We made our signature pork bolognese and spaghetti for dinner and continued to watch some shows. Pretty quiet day – I guess we needed some downtime!!
Friday July 24
Since we had pretty much stayed in all Thursday, we were keen to get out and see more of the island. We had coffee in the pool again, and we finally decided to go to The Cove, which was a beach club / restaurant for lunch.
The Cove Restaurant | iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 6.8 mm | f/1.8 | 1/5000th | ISO64
After lunch, we went for a walk / hike up Carambola Botanical Gardens. Imagine a path, leading up a hill, with a number of different species of plants and trees, ending in a lookout over the northern side of the island. Overall, the walk up was pretty challenging as it was directly up hill, and it was getting to the hottest part of the day.
Carambola Botanical Gardens | Sony A7R IV | Sony 24-70 mm f/2.8 | 45 mm | f/4 | 1/160th | ISO 250
The ‘Trail’ | Sony A7R IV | Sony 24-70 mm f/2.8 | 41 mm | f/4 | 1/60th | ISO 400
Once we got to the top, we were rewarded with a view over Anthony’s Key.
Anthony’s Key | Sony A7R IV | Sony 24-70 mm f/2.8 | 38 mm | f/4 | 1/2000th | ISO 400
Finally, after our walk my partner wanted to snorkel off the beach at West Bay, so we headed over, parked and since I didn’t bring my suit, I volunteered to acquire margarita’s at Sundowners Beach Bar. The snorkeling wasn’t very good, but she ended up chatting with some other folks in the water. Finally, we headed back to the house and made homemade pork tacos.
Saturday July 25
On Saturday, we had another lazy morning, but actually built in a high-intensity workout on Apple Fitness in the house. Finally ready to get out for lunch, we decided to try Anthony’s Key Resort, which is one of the higher rated restaurants on the island. A relatively decent club sandwich and a couple of glasses of white wine with lunch.
After lunch, we finally made our way to West End, which is at the furthest end of the island, and is home to a number of larger hotels and resorts. A rather enterprising man was pulling a kayak, which had a cooler tied to the top and he was offering pineapples with the inerds mashed up, and a bit of rum added for good measure. I like to reward those with creativity, so we tried one each.
Rum Pineapples| iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 2.7 mm | f/1.9 | 1/1600th | ISO40
My partner wanted to snorkel again, and we only had a single mask, so I pulled up at the last restaurant on the beach before a rock wall blocked any further progress. My partner only swam for a short time – about 10 minutes, and said the visibility was not very good, so she left it. We had bought hats earlier in the week, and I was putting mine to good use, while having margarita’s at The Drop Off.
My New Hat| iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 6.8 mm | f/1.8 | 1/240th | ISO64
Back to the house and another home cooked meal.
Sunday July 26
We had been discussing scuba diving on Roatàn for a long time, as it is well known as a really good dive spot. While we have done just over 50 dives, we hadn’t done any diving since 2019, so the recommendation was to do a ‘dive refresher course’ before heading out for any further diving. We went for the class at 11 AM at Roatàn Divers in West End. It consisted of about an hour of discussion and revisiting safety practices and theory. Afterwards, we went for a simple refresher dive, we did all the normal safety practices – fill eye masks with water and clear it out, take out the air regulator from the mouth and replace it, toss and and find the air hose and replace it in your mouth, as well as offerinng your diving buddy your emergency air hose. I think we only hit a depth of about 4 meters, but as they say, it was kind of like riding a bike, it all comes back to you pretty quickly.
We had a quick lunch (can you say shrimp po’boy?) at Gingers Caribbean Grill, then back to the dive shop for our ‘fun dive’. It was a decent dive to get back into things. We dove Moonlight Reef, saw a decent amount of fish, stayed under for 49 minutes until my partner was getting too cold, and we ended the dive.
After the dive, we headed back to The Drop Off for a couple of margaritas. There happened to be a live DJ, and while he was not only playing some pretty good music, I had to envy this guy. He had white hair, a pronounced white beard, playing on DJ decks on a beach in island in the Caribbean. Not a bad gig.
DJ on the Beach | iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 6.8 mm | f/1.8 | 1/3400th | ISO64
Monday July 27
On Monday, based on the fun that we had diving, we contacted the local Dive Shop (in the same building as The Cove Restaurant), and organized a guided snorkel in the bay closest to our house. 11 AM snorkel, lasting about an hour. We took a 10 minute boat ride out, and dropped in. The visibility was excellent, great coral and decent amount of fish. We were both pretty happy with that snorkel.
Afterwards, we went for lunch at the local Roatàn Brewery, which was only 5 minute drive from our house. Had a couple of beers, and a sandwich. Easy enough.
We had a relatively lazy afternoon, and we were running out of food at the house, so we headed out to Creoles Rotisserie Chicken for dinner. It was a little bit of a miss as we were going to order a half rotisserie chicken to split, but they only had thighs left, so I ended up ordering chicken tenders, which may have well come off the kids menu. In the end, good enough, but we had high hopes for the rotisserie chicken.
Tuesday July 28
On the back of the dive day, as well as the local snorkel, we booked in another snorkel day, but for much longer. We booked in with Jackson Marine Adventures in French Harbour. The booking was basically for their boat for 4 hours, and they ended up taking us to 4 separate snorkel spots, and gave us enough time to have lunch at Brady’s Cay. I wish I could tell you exactly where we went, but each stop was about a 30-45 minute snorkel, mostly with nice coral, but not a lot of fish or wildlife.
French’s Harbour | Sony A7R IV | Sony 24-70 mm f/2.8 | 70 mm | f/8 | 1/400th | ISO100
French’s Harbour | Sony A7R IV | Sony 24-70 mm f/2.8 | 26 mm | f/8 | 1/500th | ISO100
On a boat | iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 2.7mm | f/1.9 | 1/1900th | ISO40
In the evening, my partner went back to local Dive Shop for a night snorkel. I didn’t go, but she said it was excellent. Her boat was about an hour late, bringing in the prior scuba crew, but she still got out and had a great time.
Sunset over the Harbour | iPhone 16 Pro | 2.7 mm Back Camera | 6.8mm | f/1.8 | 1/70th | ISO200
Wednesday July 29
Wednesday was getting on the end of our stay in Roatàn, so Wednesday was mostly getting ready for travel. I had a late lunch at Herby’s Sports Bar, a light sandwich, then returned our rented fins to the shop in West End.
After that, it was an easy ‘clear the fridge’ type of dinner. We just had whatever was left over and what we didn’t want to toss out.
Thursday July 30
We checked out of the AirBnB, headed for an easy lunch at Sabor y Café, and headed to the airport.
One observation both of us had about Roatàn was that, I assume because it is a popular holiday destination, it almost felt like an extension of the Florida Keys – nearly everyone, including locals, all spoke very good English, and I would estimate that more of the visitors were from the US, rather than the rest of Central or South America. I don’t think that the island represented the rest of ‘mainland’ Honduras.
Another observation we had was, outside of the main tourist spots of West End and West Bay, there was literally trash all over the place. On the side of the roads, and the shorelines, assumming you were outside of the hot tourist areas. On our snorkel dive, there was loads of trash that was just lapping up against whatever shoreline there was. Now, from Palmetto Bay on the drive to anywhere West, we literally drove by a landfill – so there wasn’t an issue of having a place for the trash to go. But it would need a pretty big effort to clean up all the rubbish from around the island.
The last observation we made, was about the bugs and insects. They were more than bad. We had read that flys and sand flys were a big problem. For sand flies, they nest in beaches / sand that are not managed. Most of the hotels / resorts would sweep or otherwise agitate the sand, so the larvae wouldn’t hatch, but there were a lot of beaches that weren’t maintained. I had sores from, I suspect, sand flies for at least a month after we departed Roatàn.
Paul Rin Travel Photojournalism 