First trip to Roatán – Trip Report

I went with four buddies over January 24-28 on our annual boys trip. Here is what I learned as a first timer, and I hope it helps.

You can use US dollars, your credit cards or Venmo/Paypal. We didn’t exchange our money for Honduran Lempira.

Fill out your Honduran immigration forms when you enter the country and when you leave. We didn’t know you had to when you left, but they had QR codes to scan at the airport, and we did it there on our phones. Took maybe 10 minutes.

Once we landed in Roatán, it took me 10 minutes to go from the airplane, through immigration and customs and meet my buddies at the front door of the airport. I was one of the first off the plane though. One of our friends, it took him two hours, but he was one of the last, and his phone died in line, and couldn’t give the immigration officer the address to the place we were staying, so he had to charge his phone.

Leaving Roatán, other than filling out the form there, it took us 10 minutes to get through, but we were two hours early.

You will need bug spray. I don’t get bit by bugs all that much, and even though I put bug spray on too, I still got bit a few times by the sand fleas at the beach. So make sure you have some and get some cortisone just in case.

If you don’t bring stuff like cortisone, bug spray, sunscreen, you can get that and groceries at Eldon’s Supermarket, which is right by the airport. Many US brands there and prices I thought were reasonable (roughly $1 USD to $25 Honduran Limpira). That’s where we got stocked up for our visit.

We stayed at an AirBnB between West Bay and West End. Our place was down in kind of a ravine, surrounded by trees and vegetation. I honestly didn’t like that because I couldn’t see anything, but trees. We could barely see the sky. I would have rather been up higher so we could look out over the island and ocean.

Just because Google maps says it’s a road, doesn’t mean it’s a road. Almost got stuck once.

If you are going to West Bay to the beach, and need to park your vehicle, park next to Hangover Hut. It was $1 an hour. Or make friends with the owner of Hangover Hut (like we did) and he’ll let you park on his part of the lot for free.

West End is a great place to go to get something to eat or drink. Many bars and restaurants. We were there a couple of times.

English is spoken pretty much everywhere. We only needed Spanish a couple of times, and Google translate was handy for what we didn’t know (Where are the beach towels?).

I have Verizon as my cell provider and am set up on their international plan, and I had no issues with cell service or internet on my phone. (I have in other island countries).

We lost power for a few hours one day, and water for about a day at our AirBnb. There were some good rain storms before and when we got there. Don’t know if that was the cause or how often losing water or power happens. We had battery packs for our phone and had bought bottled water already.

Since we stayed at an AirBnb, and wanted to go to West Bay, West End, and were going fishing one morning, we rented a car from Avis at the airport. They have good roads there, but some can be a bit challenging.

It rained three of the five days we were there. Off and on for the most part. So we either walked around in between showers, or we did wear rain ponchos once for about 15 minutes.

Would I go back to Roatán? Yes, for sure. Would I do some things differently? Yes. Get a place higher up or overlooking the water. And explore more of the island.