Cayos Cochinos - Diving

Saturday, June 8, 2002

015-58.200 N
086-28.800 W

Ahoy from the Cayos Cochinos which consist of 11 cays halfway between Roatan and La Ceiba on the mainland. For the most part this set of cays have not been developed. Cochinos Grande which is about 1 sq mile, and is where we're anchored, sports a diving resort with about 12 rooms as well as a few houses. There are also very small villages on 2 of the other cays. The 2 largest cays are high, reaching about 500' and are tree covered. It's quite a sight with the sheer cliffs dropping into azure water. This is a great place to get away from it all, but not a place to be if you need supplies!

The primary reason to come here is for the diving, but from what I've seen, you're much better off going to the West End of Roatan as the diving there vastly exceeded what's here. Most of the diving here is relatively shallow, in the 40-60' range. At the sites where you can go deeper, it gets much less interesting past 60'. The best sites are right off of the mooring field at Chocinos Grande (you're not supposed to anchor anywhere here). There are supposed to be 3 dive balls at Pelican Point, and the diving at each is superb. I've never seen so many large fish in any one area. Lots of huge groupers, dog snappers, tuna, grunts, and an amazing amount of smaller fish. We saw a green sea turtle that was easily 4' long and appeared quite old based upon the barnacles on its back.

Lions Head, which in on the N side of Cochinos Grande, is an interesting site with large coral formations, about 50-100' in diameter, stretching from the bottom to about 10' from the surface. These are surrounded by white sand and form a twisting maze that you wander through. The formations are visually very interesting, but there's not a lot of fish. 30/30 point off of Cochino Pequeno was uninteresting. There are a bunch of sea mound sites that sound appealing, but I was unable to find any information as to where they were located. There were also probably too far away for a dinghy ride.

The Plantation Beach resort on Cochinos Grande is very friendly towards boaters. It's currently being managed by Tommy and his girlfriend, whose name I can't spell. They just arrived here from Croatia 3 weeks ago to run the place. They're trying to save enough to rebuild their families homes that were destroyed in the war and then get some money to start their own venture. They're wonderful and speak very good English. I've had scuba tanks filled there, went out on a dive with them, and if you call in advance, you can have meals with them. They've also offered fuel, but I'm sure that's in limited quantities.

One of the major, or shall I say "very small", problems down here are sand flies. You might not think that a tiny fly that you can barely see would be much of a problem, but the bite that they produce is incredibly irritating. I'm COVERED with huge red welts that have lasted for days. I'm on Benedryl to reduce the swelling & itching. We fumigated the boat last night to try to get rid of all of these little suckers, and that helped. We also move to another mooring a long way from the beach in hopes that'll help too. But it's amazing how far they can fly!

Tomorrow it's on to La Ceiba to get the anchor roller remade. Until then...

Here's a view of the mainland on a rare clear day from the Cayos Cochinos.

Log ID: 243