The resort itself is situated on Roatan Island, about 35 miles off the coast of Honduras. The key is an even smaller island that houses the bungalows the guests stay in. The key looked a bit like a tropical jungle if you ignored that the ground was carefully raked every morning and the plants were palm trees or exotic flowering things. There was a boat that took you between the main resort and the key. The bungalows hugged the shoreline with porches that extended out over the water.
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Little did we know that it was also the home of feral cats that would break into your rooms and take them over. You think I jest but in fact two (of three on the island) ran into the room while the door was open, fell asleep on the bed, then for the next two days would call to be let in and out. We were, of course, at their beck and call.
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The resort itself was nice, but what really stood out was the food (all part of the package), which was spectacular whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner. It also had a small museum explaining the history of the area back to pre-Columbian times.
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The rooms were solid and spacious if not luxurious, and we enjoyed watching the sun set sitting in our hammocks if we were not out on a snorkel (or, in a couple of cases, dive for Dave). The Key also had a pool and bar and they would do activities like "fiesta night" featuring two for one drinks and hermit crab racing (Huidi's crab won).
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I managed to do two dives, one wreck dive, the Odyssey, and one wall dive with Brad and Huidi. There's something very primal about shipwrecks and this is a large one, with the deep part of the ship in 100 feet of water.
The wall dive was great once we got down to about sixty feet, where visibility was very good, but one of the divers ran out of air so it was cut short.
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fiesta night
Snorkeling and diving both left from the main lodge twice a day. It was funny that the first day there was an orientation that lasted over half an hour for the divers, then the snorkelers had one, and it was literally, "Your boat is the Pita Cara over there" and that was it.
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Most of the snorkeling was near the resort, but we did the far side of Roatan one day at a site called "five stars", and it was some of the clearest water we've every been in, truly spectacular.
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At the end of the five stars snorkel, we stopped at Maya Key for lunch. Maya Key has a small zoo of animals native to Honduras and a reconstruction of some Mayan ruins (the Iguana and the little rodents are wild). The guide was the animal's caretaker, and (unwisely, we think) would hug the monkeys and pet the big cats, including a Jaguar.
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There was one night snorkel that was pretty good because a lot of things that don't show up by day where running around, and tiny little Cleaning Gobis (kind of a guppy) where out in massive swarms.
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The snorkeling around the resort was not as nice, but it was still good and there was the "find as many different kinds of fish as you can" game. Here's a smattering of critter we saw.
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 A little hard to make out, but this is an Octopus eating conch |
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The weather was pretty good overall; we had two days of rain, but that didn't keep us from going out.
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We did the dolphin encounter Friday (although there was a boat that ran over to the small key that hosted it, so we visited before the official visit, and the dolphins would swim up to the edge of the pen to say hi). It consisted of a photo shoot and then some time swimming in the dolphin pen with them. And, to placate any animal activists out there, the dolphins are allowed to leave the pen; they are there because they like the free fish.
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Final note; for those interested, almost all of the underwater shots were done with a GoPro 10 in video mode, or in photo / narrow lens mode. I found the video mode did a generally better job with color and you could get closer to the fish and grab a frame when the shot was centered, making it much easier to get what you were shooting (at the end of a long selfie stick), but it's 4K video instead of a 23 MP photo. I ended up switching back and forth between modes. I'm generally happy with the GoPro although it can be a little quirky at times; the simplicity of the "two button" approach also means there's a lot of assumptions about how things should work that can end with unexpected results.
And, finally, a few movies (may take a minutes to load) that are fun:
night dive, squid and Gobi
night dive, octopus
wreck dive
wall dive