Our trip — this is the last one, I promise — was to an island off the east coast of Honduras. Roatan is the location. The place we stayed was a lovely facility called Anthony’s Key Resort. We landed on a small airport at Roatan, resort staff picked us up at the airport, fetched our luggage and pointed us to their shuttle and we stayed there the full week. We never saw the mainland. Indeed, with the exception of our dives and the zip lines we never left the resort.
This is entirely possible if you’ve packed halfway decently. And even if you need an extra snack, or some souvenirs or the occasional odd-and-end you may have left at home, the resort itself might be able to sell you what you need.
You can go into the nearby town, but there’s not really any reason. Here’s why.
This was our view, breakfast lunch and dinner:
Anthony’s Key has a restaurant on site, is apparently building another and prepared meals are included in your trip.
If you aren’t diving, or enjoying the pool, kayaking or paddleboarding, or sitting in a hammock, you’re looking out at that view over your choice of two or three entrees. (The food was quite good, too.) Indeed, most people visiting there are divers — it is a dive resort — but they have built out some nice amenities for the non-diver in the family, if you have that sort of vacation-planning challenge. There’s fishing, excursions off the resort, the pool, the bar and an incredibly pleasant atmosphere. Also there’s a museum and a full-on dive school on-site. (But maybe have the non-divers learn at home.)
I mentioned that the most of the rooms were on a cay. Ours was. We were close to the pool, but we never heard the kids at play from inside the room. I took this picture standing on the big island, but what you see is where most of the rooms are.
The resort operates an on-demand ferry 24 hours a day. (There’s also a medical clinic on the island, with regular hours and an on-call doc, just in case.) The ferry is a small outboard motor boat and will accommodate about 10 or 12 people at a time. It takes maybe 20 seconds to get across.
My mother visited this resort years ago and she really enjoyed it. From hearing her talk, to seeing it today, I have a sense that the place has really matured. It is a full-service resort, and we had a great time. Here we are getting off the ferry to go up to dinner one night, and you can see the edge of the cay on the right:
We enjoyed a nice off-season deal. There are plenty of positive online reviews about Anthony’s Key and Roatan has, for a long time, had a positive reputation for the quality of its diving. This is what really sold us: We talked to the dive shop owner in Bloomington and told him where we were thinking of going. Part of his job is to run a store, sure, and part of his job is to teach people how to dive, absolutely. But another standard dive shop service is operating dive trip junkets. The guy here has been going to Anthony’s Key for almost 30 years. Raved about it. Told us, by name, who we’d meet first, where they’d point us to second and who we would meet second. He spelled the whole thing out. We weren’t on this trip through his shop, but he couldn’t stop singing the place’s praises. You figure anyone who keeps going back every year for decades must have found something he likes. As his excitement grew, so did ours. Having spent a week there, it’s easy to see why everyone always comes back with such high opinions of the place. The living is comfortable, the diving is nice and easy.
Most importantly: While you are there it is easy to get on, and enjoy, island time.
Or, shorthand: If we’ve gone there it is probably great. The Yankee plans terrific vacations.
