Scuba divers are much like children, I imagine, to dive-resort owners: They are almost always wonderful to have, but at night, it’s best if they are safely in their beds.
This thought popped into my head at the end of a night dive, off the southern shore of the Honduran island of Roatán in December. As the sun set, four of us had waded into the dark waters that lay only yards from the Reef House Resort, and swam down the side of a steep underwater cliff, holding flashlights to illuminate trumpet fish, lobsters, brain coral, sea fans and the other marine life that call this part of the nearly 700-mile Mesoamerican Reef home. Night dives were new to me: The inky darkness was exhilarating, mysterious, alive and more than a little frightening.
After 45 minutes of underwater wonderment, I safely ascended and surfaced while Aaren, my travel partner, and our new scuba buddies, Will and Kris, stayed just below, taking one last photograph. But instead of emerging to silence and milky white stars, I saw a figure with a flashlight standing on the nearby jetty, shouting.
“Follow my light! Do you hear my voice? Swim to me,” called Davey Byrne, a co-owner of the Reef House, our home for three nights over the Christmas holiday.
Surprised, I responded by blurting out the first thing in my head: “It’s OK! We were just looking at two cuttle fish!”
Davey laughed and said no problem, he simply wanted to make sure we were all right. The bar, and dinner, were waiting whenever we got out of the water.
Eating, diving, sleeping, on repeat
About 35 miles off the northern coast of mainland Honduras, Roatán is the largest of the Bay Islands, an archipelago encircled by some of the prettiest and most accessible coral reefs anywhere in the world. Deciding not to cancel this international trip — our first since the pandemic began — was a gut buster, as it was for many who had holiday travel plans this year. As a travel editor, the virus and its impact on travel has been on the forefront of my mind for nearly two years, and now in late December, half of the Greater New York area seemed to be sick from omicron and the other half awaiting test results. What if I brought the virus to the island? What if I tested positive and fell ill? What if our flights were among the thousands canceled? The questions were endless and the judgment — unspoken, spoken and internal — brutal.
But neither Aaren nor I had underlying conditions. We were both boosted and tested negative each of the three days before our flight. Other precautions included wearing double K95 masks while flying as well as on our three taxi rides. We brought our own scuba regulators and other gear, and planned to spend our time outside, mainly with each other, or underwater.
The Bay Islands lie along the southern end of the Mesoamerican Reef, one of the largest barrier reefs in the world (Australia’s Great Barrier Reef comes first in this category) — it touches Guatemala, Mexico and Belize, as well as Honduras. It’s a vibrant, diverse marine ecosystem, with around 65 coral species, more than 500 types of fish and almost countless other examples of marine life like sea turtles and sponges.
It delivered. We made our base at the rustic 10-room Reef House, on a cay a brief boat ride from the village of Oakridge, and spent our days eating, diving, sleeping, on repeat. Four days, eight dives, one snorkel, countless creatures, breathtaking beauty. None of the dive sites were more than a 10-minute ride from the resort, on the dive boat docked at the Reef House. Swimming down vertical reef walls and through coral canyons, we spotted green moray eels, nurse sharks, toadfish, puffer fish, schools of blue chromis and invasive lionfish. Our dive master, David, skewered many of the last in front of us to our horrified delight. The colors, textures and shapes of the corals and sea fans ranged from the reds and greens of Christmas to a Southwest landscape of cactus-like corals in shades of sand and lavender. Never were there more than four divers on an outing, excluding our dive master, nor another boat at the mooring.
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