Location: French Harbour, Roatan, Honduras

Overall: CoCo View is a resort that primarily caters to scuba divers. It is a small community of bungalows, cabanas and buildings on a secluded peninsula and not a traditional luxury resort with fancy restaurants and clubs. CoCo View has a very tropical feel, with flocks of Hummingbirds darting around, palm trees and other lush tropical greenery everywhere, and no cars at all. All of the bungalows and cabanas are directly on the water. Diving is sensational, with two walls and a wreck right off the resort beach and dozens of coral reef/wall dive sites reachable via dive boat within minutes.

Getting there: Getting to Roatan is fairly easy. It may be a peninsula off an island off mainland Honduras, but it's just a two and a half hour flight from Houston and Atlanta, and two hours from Miami to Roatan island.

Arrival/customs: You no longer fill out customs documents on your flight. Instead, you must fill out an online precheck form (best done on a Windows computer) and submit it. Upon arrival, depending on the crowd and timing of flight arrivals, it can take quite a bit to make it past immigration, which includes electronic fingerprint scanning. Depending on your airline, exiting the plane may be in front and rear, so sitting in the back may get you to immigration first!

If your luggage is marked with one of the hot pink CoCo View tags that you receive with your package, CoCo View staff will gather it together. Once through immigration, you also go through customs carry-on check, which is very fast. A CoCo View staff person meets and greets you and shows you to the airconditioned CoCo View bus.

When you leave, you're generally dropped off with plenty of time to spare. You can use the time to get your paper work done with immigrations. There is no exit tax to be paid at the airport (it's included in your plane ticket). Your carry-on will be checked and then re-checked. And re-checked again (on our August 2023 trip, there were SIX check points).

Getting to the resort: The ride from the airport to CoCo View is about 20 minutes in a CoCo View bus. You see a colorful mix of American-style shopping strips, more modest local stores, corrugated steel covered huts, and driveways to mansions and resorts. You can ask the driver to stop at a supermarket if you want to pick up snacks and such.

The ride ends at a large boathouse from where you're ferried to the actual resort, just a short way away across a still mangrove-rimmed lagoon, and yet so far from civilization. Once at the resort, you get a brief introduction from a staff person who also hands out forms and the usual disclaimers and waivers to sign (you can download them ahead of time here). The office will want to see your diving C-cards.

General: CoCo View is a completely "self-contained" resort. It is secluded and totally secure (we never even locked our room), and unless you schedule a trip via boat and van/taxi, you never have to leave the resort. I am not the partying type and was quite content with staying at the resort, especially since the clubhouse is a nice hangout and I was usually busy uploading my underwater pictures and just generally being too exhausted from diving. The resort does organize several events every week that you can sign up for, and so you never get bored. Below you can see some of the guestroom bungalows and cabanas on water. Yes, they have incredible sunsets.

Rooms: There are different styles of rooms at CoCo View, with a total of 29 generously sized guest rooms in all. They consist of four over-the-water bungalow rooms, 12 over-the-water cabana rooms, and 12 oceanfront rooms. In addition, there are the Mango Suite, and the CoCo Casa and CoCo Villa beach houses. A few privately owned beach houses right next to CoCo View may also be available.

During our August 2023 trip we stayed at Cabana C10 in the all-wood cabana structures sitting on stilts on the water. The room was large, had a double and a queen size bed, several fans, and US-type 110 Volt electrical outlets. There are plenty of lights.

Water pressure was very good and there was plenty of hot water. Each room has a 5-gallon jug of filtered water for drinking or whatever else you want to use it for (the resort says the tap water is fine, but the recommendation is not to use it for drinking). There were enough towels. Beach/boat towels can be picked up and exchanged in front of the office free of charge.

There was no hair dryer (which we certainly didn't need anyway), and there aren't the usual elaborate little toiletry kits, so bring your own shampoo. Our room did have a bottle of liquid soap, and also a large bar of soap. The room had a coffee maker which I used every day. The local coffee supplied is strong and delicious. A nice size covered balcony faces, and is on, the sea; a great place to have your morning coffee or enjoy a starry night in the comfortable hammock.

The air conditioner in our room was a modern split unit with remote control and worked very well. That's a blessing when it's hot and muggy (which it is much of the year).

Clubhouse/Dining Room: The Clubhouse building serves as dining room, bar, hangout and, upstairs, conference/class room and hangout with a large flatscreen TV. It's a tropical looking rustic all-wooden structure that also has a ping-pong table and dancing area, games, as well as a library area. The Clubhouse used to be the focal point of the resort, but since Wi-Fi became available in the guest rooms, it's become quieter in there and at the bar.

Food: Full packages include breakfast, lunch and dinner. All meals are buffet-style. Food is now behind glass and you tell staff what you want. There is always a nice diversity so that there is something for everyone. Food quality and taste on our August 2023 stay was good. There is no soda machine, but you can help yourself to unlimited lemonade, water, coffee and ice tea (and lots of ice). If you want soda, beer, wine or drinks with dinner, get them at the bar (inquire about prices as they keep going up). Make sure you get there on time or else the staff may have already closed the buffet.

Bar: The tropical-style bar is part of the diningroom/clubhouse. Beer, wine and alcoholic drinks are available. Try CoCoView's special resort drink, the Monkey LaLa. Sodas all come in old-fashioned glass bottles. There's Fanta, Coca Cola and Coca Cola Light (different from Diet Coke), as well as "Tropical" grape and other sodas. The bar runs a tab. No bar tips as those are included in the summary tip paid at the end (see below).

Dive boats: CoCo View has a fleet of four sturdy 50-foot regular dive boats, plus the larger and speedy Easy Diver boat and the Reef Nut boat used for snorkel groups and other adventures. You sit along the sides, your tanks behind you, with a cubby below the seat. There is an area to soak cameras. Entry into the water is either at the back of the boat or on either side. To get back in, you either use the two ladders at the back or re-enter through a shaft in the bottom of the boat. The boat has cold water and our crew usually offered sliced fresh pineapple or water melon. After the morning and afternoon dive to designated dive sites, the boats will drop you off at dive sites close to shore (usually Newman's Wall in the morning, CoCo View Wall in the afternoons). You can ask them to drop you off where you want to go.

Air: You get your own tanks or staff will automatically bring them to your locker. The boat crew will put your BC/tank on the boat for you (unless you signal not to with a wooden token). Air is included in the price of the dive package. If you want Nitrox (which virtually everyone used during our August 2023 stay), it's US$8 per tank or US$135 per week per diver. Nitrox tanks must be tested for Oxygen percentage by divers, with the information entered into a logbook that's on the table in each boat's locker area. Each locker area has an oxygen sensor. Nitrox divers are also responsible for putting a sticker with Nitrox info on their tanks. You can leave your dive gear in a locker/gearing-up area on the dock.

Weights: The resort has lead weights that you check out when you get there. You determine how much you need. There are plenty and they are available in one-pound increments.

Diving: CoCo View offers a nearly unbeatable combination of reef and wall diving. The location of the resort is unique. There are two walls (the CoCo View Wall and the Newman Wall) within easy reach from the shore. CoCo View Wall is within 140 yards from beach entry right in front of the CoCo View clubhouse where the water is almost always totally calm. It's shallow, too, and you can walk out to a small platform. From there it's between four and ten feet deep until the sandy bottom descends into a deeper channel between the two walls. The wreck of the Prince Albert, a 140 foot long former tanker, lies in maybe 65 feet of water and, a short distance away, so do the remnants of a DC3 airplane. Where else can you go dive a major wreck and a historic airplane right from the beach?

The CoCo View dive schedule consist of two boat trips every day. The boats usually leave at 8:30AM for a dive site that's anywhere from five minutes to half an hour away. You never go too far from the shore as the reefs and walls are close. Each dive boat has a captain and a dive master. The dive master explains each dive, points out interesting things during the dive, and makes sure no one gets lost. Dives are usually an hour. For the second dive of a boat trip, the captain will drop you off at one of the walls close to the resort, or over the wreck. In the afternoons, the boat leaves at 2:00PM, again doing one dive site and a drop-off dive.

Most dives consist of a drop off to a reef top at depths between 20 and 45 feet and then excursions along walls that can drop down from dozens to many hundreds of feet. Visibility varies from very good to a bit murky, and it can change quickly depending on where you go. Along the walls it is usually fair to very good, and on the reef tops as well. In the channel between the two walls, where the wreck of the Prince Albert lays, visibility is usually less and changes almost on an hourly basis. Most often, CoCo View sites have between 50 and 80 feet visibility.

For beach night dives, the protocol at CoCo View is that a flashing strobe must be attached high above the bottom on the "front yard" buoy mooring chain. The first diver who goes out must take the strobe and attach it. Each subsequent diver signs for and takes a numbered tag that must be clipped onto the chain. That way everyone knows divers are out there. Upon return, the last diver retrieves the strobe and brings it back in.

Shark dive: You can sign up for a shark dive organized by a couple of Italian divemasters who run Waihuka Diving Adventures. The dive site they boat their daring customers to is called "Cara a Cara" — Spanish for Face-to-Face. You go down a line to about 70 feet where you stand or sit against a cliff. Shark feed operations use chum buckets full of stuff that sharks like and the local sharks know the routine. Once the dinner bell is rung, Caribbean Reef Sharks appear in a hurry and do get into the feeding frenzy you see in TV documentaries. However, they have no interest whatsoever in the divers, just the food in the chum bucket. Divers are allowed to circle around the whole scene. Once the chum is gone, the sharks leave. The whole thing is recorded on video and participants can buy a copy.

Fish and other sea life: This is diving in Caribbean waters on a shallow reef system and along dramatic vertical walls that can drop down anywhere from a few dozen feet to the next ledge or several hundred feet. It is a macro photographer's dream. You will see a lot of small fish — jaw fish, damsels, blennies, butterfly fish, chromis or hamlets. Somewhat larger are the angel fish, parrot fish, groupers and many more. You may also encounter the occasional octopus, sea horse, barracuda, nurse shark, dolphin, turtle, scorpion fish and spiny lobster. There are schools of spade fish, jacks and sometimes, right off CoCo View resort, squid. You generally won't see many pelagics, though it always pays to keep your eyes open when you're swimming along a wall and peruse the blue water (once we even saw a whaleshark).

Dolphins and other extra activities: You can book a trip to go see dolphins (dive, snorkel, do an encounter), zip-line through the tropical forest, take an island tour, or go shopping. We've done the Friday afternoon Eco Tour a few times and highly recommend it.

Facilities/amenities:

• The Dockside Dive Shop is a PADI 5-star facility. It has a good variety of whatever one might need. The shop runs a tab for your room. The tab must be paid the day you depart, separately from the bill.

• There is Caribbean Reef Photography, a photo/video center run by Caribbean Reef Life author Mickey Charteris where you can get advice, supplies, rent camera equipment, and sign up for underwater photography classes.

• There is a weight/exercise room that has the best air conditioning in all of the resort. If you ever get hot, go to the exercise room to cool off.

• CoCo View has a small, centrally located shop adjacent to the office. It has a little bit of everything, from snacks and drinks (including some alcohol) to a nice cross section of mementos, souvenirs and fashions of all kinds. Some represent the arts of the islands and the prices are often lower than what one would pay from one of the visiting vendors.