Welcome to Tyll’s Dive located in the heart of West End on Roatan, the Bay Islands, Honduras home of the world’s second largest barrier reef.Tyll’s Dive takes pride in offering scuba divers a small family atmosphere where you are not just any number or just another diver. We dive in small groups. When you dive with Tyll’s Dive you are part of the dive family.Tyll’s dive family is world wide.
Instructor and backgammon player Tanguy and his student
Slippery Dick about to head out. In the water Matt and Jenny
Alva and her kitchen
Not happy with my draft for the June-July entry so decided for the this. Enjoy.
I think it was mid 2002 that we took over Tyll's Dive. Tyll kindly told us we can use his equipment , boat and compressor to start up with. So here we are with the apparently unsinkable boat called Con Permiso, a bunch of equipment that had seen better days, a squirrel that would pee on you when you passed by its cage to go to the toilet, a parrot called Hamburgeso, a dog named Pastelito and last Tyll's and Alvas adopted son, Christian. (The kid from hell, to be honest).
We had entered the Fiascos in Paradise:-)
We orderd a few sets of new equipment, hired Dexter to build a boat that could travel further than Blue Channel. We had a partner at this point, Jas. He sold out later though. It was all challenging times. Even order food at Alvas restaurant was a thing in itself. You order your food, go diving, and it might be ready when you get back. But hi, thats how it was.
The building of the boat took longer than anticipated, so in the meanwhile we got a skiff from Don Hickmann and used the tinfoil boat from Doc Radowski. Just imagine the picture.
The equipment arrived and finally Dexter brought the boat as he got tired of the checking ups on the progress. Colour was grasshopper green...Not the agreed colour, but guess was what he had available.
Uwe and Jas were horrified. I found it was pretty in a special way. Uniquie, only boat in West End with that colour. Well they won and it got repainted and named Slippery Dick after a wrasse.
Many evenings there would be people playing guitar and singing. The Burrito Brothers would chip in with their repetoire like Ground Hog Day, Monica Monica and Running with the Buffaloes (all composed by Tyll)
The idea of moving or at least revisit Central America got planted in our heads in the end of the 1980'ties. Had visited friends in Guatemala and El Salvador and just fell in love. Almost 10 years passed before we came back. First we had to live out the dream of having a house on the country side in Denmark with garden, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and a pig.
Every sunday we would study the newspaper travel section and dream of places far far away. Then one sunday, a danish journalist had this brilliant article about the Bay Islands and in particular Roatan, it just sounded to be the place you have to visit. We were still not divers at that time. But the article we kept and made it a goal that one time we would go there. In the meanwhile Uwe got certified as a CMAS diver at the local diveclub in Loekken, Denmark. Do I have to mention cold water diving? I Dorte) was not as hardcore and chose to get Padi certified on Crete im Greece. Anyhow I managed to join Uwe and his drysuit buddies for around 10 cold water dives on the west coast of Denmark. Then finally we had saved up for a month vacation to ROATAN in Octuber 1998. It took a bit longer to save up, because everytime we were close, the car broke down and had to be fixed.... We were getting suspicious that our mecanic had an fix alert build in that was connected to our Roatan trip savings account...
Anyways. We finally arrive . Of course the taxi driver tells us that Dolphin Hotel is the only place that has room available this late of the day, which turned out to be a lie. By the way they still do that to people arriving late in the day.
We go for a little stroll to find a bite to eat. First impression of West End was THATS IT?. Thats gonna be 4 long weeks. It seemed so small.
Next day we got a nicer place to stay at Geophies Hide away and met dutch Ron. We are still big friends. Shared a lot of rum and stories and still do by the way when we get a chance to visit. We went diving every day. Everything was beautiful an pristine. Huge groupers the size of me, my dive buddies. Then remember it was fall 1998. Hurricane season. Well of course Hurricane Mitch passed by to say hello. Was interesting days. No power -no water- no internet. Well internet was not very common those days anyway. So the news about the storm was sparesly. Rudys family decided we should empty the concrete watercistern and use it as a shelter. All right so we did. We were all prepared. But Mitch just kept harassing neighboring island, Guanaja. But that was still very close. The power of nature surely flexed its muscles and toyed with us for days.
You might think, thats it, never coming back. No, seeing people helping each other in the community effort at getting things back on track and collect to them that lost stuff was the most amazing thing. Unfutunately we had to leave a week early because of family issues back home. Thanked everyone for a great time, and told Ron, Hi dutch boy, we will be back and be your neighbour again.
Went back to Denmark sold the rest of our belongings (the car we sold to the mecanic, well he knew what he/we had replaced all parts possible). So we packed our bags once again in January 1999. Arrive in Miami for Superbowl. Great! No room under a $100 to be found. Welcome to Miami!!! Airport luggagecarts works though, you just have to move around when the vacumcleaner woman approaches you.
We arrive, and people here all the same, maybe a few new faces. And Ron, the dutch boy had not left. Happy days to see a good friend.
So now we here. No plans at all. We dive and gain experience of the reef and the islandlife, how things work. Uwe does his divemaster and later instructor. Get involved in maintain and troubleshoot aircompressors, boat engines and scuba equipment. I learn go diving without Uwe being my dive buddy. Clyde assures he will look after me. And he did. I get to be the diveshop girl (not quite a manager yet), but observe what to do and not to do if it was my shop.
At some point down the road we decide to leave the island to explore other places. 4 months later we are back! And it was great to come back home. We missed it so much. We got our old jobs back too. Just like that.
And then we got friends with Tyll. And a whole new chapter and challenges began with taking over Tyll's Dive.
This is the cutest little video of a free swimming seahorse in the shallow water in Half Moon Bay. It was filmed a couple of years ago by one of our divemasters in training. It was either Jeppe, Matthias or Yves. I have not posted it earlier as I thought I had lost it on one of my by now many broken laptops.
But today was cleaning up day on the USB sticks, and there it was.
And since Amanda is actually finding seahorses, pipehorses and all sorts of things lately its a perfect time to share this video clip.
We just returned from our trip Sunday night, so I am just beginning to get caught back up with reality ; )
We VERY MUCH enjoyed our scuba diving experience with you and Monique.
Everything went very smoothly--Tony was wonderful--and it was VERY reassuring to know that you had those details handled for us ahead of time.
I was very glad not to have to deal with the scammers at the port and have to haggle on transportation to and from your place and be assured return to the ship on time. Not knowing the local customs, and being a single mother, I was very leary and YOU made it all work out just perfectly!
Tony was a true gentleman and very attentive.
That being said, it was our scuba experience with you all that was BY FAR the highlight of our trip! We can't wait to come back and are thinking of maybe staying out there on the West End by you somewhere for a week next year and really take the time to enjoy that gorgeous little piece of paradise!
Be sure to Thank Monique for holding my hand throughout the entire dive experience--I was clearly the most difficult diver and she was a true GEM! Love HER!
When things settle down here a bit I will send the photos you requested and would be happy to write a review for you on Trip Advisor or do anything else I can to help you and your wonderful business thrive!
Kristin Haynes has over the last months been a busybee here in West End. She has made a painting of nearly every diveshop, bar and restaurant by now. Postcards have been printed and the profit from the sales goes to the SolFoundation: www.solroatan.org You can see more if you visit www.kristinhaynes.blogspot.com
Congratulations to Sarah (England), Monique (Holland) and Ryan (USA,) who all have completed their divemastertraining in the last few days. Sarah had to go back home. Monique will be staying and get som guiding experience, Ryan went up to Marble Hills to work for a while. They all did a good job.
In this photo:David, Marcos -boatcaptain,Nicole, Nick, Alison Uwe -Tyll's Dive, Kirk-instructor, Muffin, Bryan,Jen, Gillian, Dorte-Tyll's Dive, Rino-divemaster but where is Kala? she was supposed to have been on this photo?
Heather from Canada and Fredrik from Italy/Sweden/everywhere...just got certified this Easterfriday. Kirk was their instructor in is doing the paperwork for them in this moment. Come back and do some more diving. You were a splendid buddyteam.
