Honduras

Where can I see your posts on Honduras?

Click the see articles button on the right sidebar, or scroll to the bottom of the page for mobile.

When did you travel to Honduras?

January-April, 2013.

Which areas of Honduras did you visit?

I spent four months living on the island of Roatan.

Why did you go to Honduras?

When I was in college, back in 2011, I was browsing facebook one day and saw a post from a childhood friend that he had been accepted to do a divemaster internship in Honduras. Could such a marvelous sounding thing really exist? I had exactly 7 dives to my name at the time, but was already in love with the sport. Curiosity peaked, I got in touch and began to do my own research. A year later I still couldn’t let go of the idea, and so decided to reward myself for graduating a semester early by taking that semester and signing up for the divemaster internship at Subway Watersports on the island of Roatan.

How did you get to your final destination from the US?

I arrived the long route. After flying into Guatemala City, my family and I took shuttles and busses to Antigua, then to Copán, and finally to La Ceiba. From La Ceiba, there is an hour-and-a-half ferry that runs to Roatan.

Alternatively, just fly directly to Roatan Airport (RTB). American Airlines flies direct from both Miami and Dallas. Delta flies direct from Atlanta, and United Airlines offers a direct flight from Houston.

What advice do you have for someone visiting Honduras (Specifically Subway Watersports)?

→ Subway Watersports is the best dive shop in the world to do a divemaster internship. It’s not too big, not too small, and it offers housing, which many others do not. Ok I may be biased, but I have also traveled to many places since Honduras, and have yet to find an internship program that I wished I could have replaced mine with. I sent a few friends to Subway after my time there to do the same program, and wrote up this list of tips for them. They probably belong in an intern-advice specific post, but I will leave them here for now:

→ Pack sweats, and possibly a lightweight, water resistant windbreaker of some sort. Rainy season is October – January and it can get surprisingly chilly.

→ The sandflies will probably eat you alive your first couple weeks there. Don’t worry, you build immunity to them after a month or so. Always rinse off in fresh water when you get out of the ocean; they love the salt. Baby oil, or wearing other sorts of oil helps because they land on you and then get stuck. Be respectful of oil usage on the boats though. You don’t want it spilling and making surfaces slippery for people wearing heavy gear. Don’t scratch the bites. They will leave a little red dot that will disappear after a day if you leave it alone, but if you scratch it, it will turn into a bump resembling a mosquito bite that never goes away.

→ Don’t waste space in your luggage with a months’ worth of heavy toiletry items; there is a supermarket called Eldons that is very Americanized, and you can find everything you need there.

→ Hitchhiking is totally a thing, and the best way to get around. There is one main road that runs the entire length of the island, so all you have to do is walk to the main road and someone is bound to pick you up. Most people drive pickup trucks, so they will simply stop and allow you to hop in the bed. Bang on the cab when you’re seated, and again when you’ve reached your stop. People are more likely to stop if you are a lady or have a lady friend with you.

→ Jump naked off the second story of Foster’s (in West End) for free drinks.

→ Salva Vida is the local beer. When you order it in a restaurant, they will serve it to you in a bottle with a napkin. The napkin is to wipe the rim because the bottle is recycled.

→ Try a Monkey Lala, Roatan’s signature drink.

→ Eat at Blue Parrot for the best jerk sauce you’ve ever had.

→ Head out east to La Sirena. It’s a little hut of a restaurant that sits on the water, and their menu consists of three or four items based on what they caught that day.

→ Find a local who can show you the rope swing near Keyhole Bay. Not very many people know about it, and it is a little slice of hidden paradise.

→ Get your lionfish spearing license ASAP! $50 and you get a spear, a lesson on how not to harm the reef (you practice on coconuts), and your license. Then you get to go out on lionfish hunting dives. When you catch enough, bring them to the kitchen at Turquoise Bay and they will make ceviche for you, free of charge, but it’s nice to tip them.

→ Do NOT get stung by the lionfish. Your day and possibly your whole week will be ruined.

→ Get together with the other interns and charter one of the dive shop’s boats to take you all to Pigeon Cay one day. Just do it.

→ Skip the Iguana Farm. It’s really just a few park benches and a dock with a bunch (ok hundreds) of iguanas around. It’s kind of creepy. You can see iguanas all over the island without having to pay an entrance fee.

→ Most days we would stop at Eldons (the local supermarket) on the way home from work to do our grocery shopping. There is an ATM there, and they also exchange cash if you want to bring USDs with you and avoid the withdrawal fees.

→ Down the road from the intern house you will come to Natale’s Beach. The snorkeling there is fantastic.

→ If you get an ear infection (fairly likely) you can just walk into a pharmacy and they will know what to give you.

Basic Information:

→ Capital: Tegucigalpa

→ Population: 9,112,867

→ Area: 43,443 square miles (112,492 square kilometers)

→ Currency: Lempira

→ Time Zone: UTC -6  (Central Standard Time)

→ Official Languages: Spanish

→ Religions: Catholic (51.4%), Protestant (36.2%), Non-religious (11.1%), Atheist or agnostic (8%), other (1.3%)