Rony's Vs. Victor Bodden

[m and m's]

What optional tours did you do? I have 2 kids (8 & 3) and requested price quotes for the monkey business and glassbottom boat/snorkeling tours (in addition to the "best of roatan" private tour). For all that it should be about $175 for the day. That's better than the Carnival prices AND we would have a driver for the day. What did you tip the driver for the day?

 

My only concern would be getting back to the ship on time, but I didn't see anyone have any problems with that! :)

 

Thanks, TF

We used Rony's tours Here is Rony's website: http://www.ronystours.com/, great time. If you go to the monkey place, many people brought nuts or a banana, which they would come to eat, BUT what would get them to stick around on you was water. You can buy a bottle of water when you get tickets. The monkey tossed the banana off the woman's hand to make room for her to pour more water! Also, be aware of how much time you spend there, It is fun, but you can use up a lot of time feeding the monkeys, deer, and holding parrots!

[northernpike]

Just got back from Roatan and spent a day with Bodden Tours. Absolutely incredible! Had Derek as our personal guide for the entire day. Very informative, excellent english. We had a group of 13 (14 months to 76yrs). We toured the island (Derek stopped to show us plants, etc, bought us island pastries), went to Victor's place to see the monkeys(don't miss this), then half the group went horseback riding and half went to the beach. I can't imagine a better way to spend the day in Roatan. Victor Bodden runs a first class operation and eliminates all the stress from an independent excusion - and saves a ton of money compared to ship tours.

[tip]

We stopped in Roatan about six weeks ago and had pre-booked a tour with Rony's. As promised, he met us at the top of the hill and took us to his cousin, Michael. We spent close to six hours with him visiting the Iguana Farm, the Botanical Gardens, a trip to the west end, lunch at a neat local place called "Bertie's" along with some sightseeing and shopping in Coxen's Hole. It was time well spent and Michael was both accomodating and knowledgeable.

[Dawn125408]

What is Victor's Bodden's web address?

 

 

 

Just google Victor Bodden Tours - Roatan. We used them and they were amazing. Will use them again on our upcoming cruise in September :D

[SuzieQK]

We just came off the 4-03 Dream cruise. In Roatan didnt want to zipline since we already did that in Costa Rica. So I emailed Rony to see if we could get a driver for a few hours to see the highlights of Roatan. http://www.ronystours.com

I received an email back the same day saying that anything we wanted would be fine. The cost for the two of us was $80, the more people you had it would still be $80 for the day.

The night that I received the email, the phone rang and my daughter said that a Rony was calling from Honduras-imagine my surprise!! Rony was calling to tell us that anything we wanted he would make happen. He informed us that the pier we were going to dock at was new, and gave us directions on how to find him once we docked. He sent us a confirmation and we were all set.

Once docked we made our way to the designated spot and Rony was there to meet us and gave us Felix for the day. We explained we only wanted him for a few hours and Rony said no problem, we just told Felix what we wanted to see and off we went.

Felix showed drove us around the entire island, stopping whenever we wanted to take pictures. We went to Victor Boddens Monkey Business($5pp) and played with the monkeys which was the highlight of my day. We went to the iguana farm($8pp) and fed the iguanas.

Felix took us around for 5 hours instead of the 2-3 hours we requested. He made sure we saw everything on the island. He was a fantastic driver!! He took us by the 4 zipline companys and recommended South Shore zip lines since they give the best experience of canopy and beach ziplining.

We cannot wait to go back to Roatan, its a beautiful island and Rony and Felix Hernandez were great hosts!!

[Pptarmigan]

I can't say enough about how much we enjoyed our tour with Rony's. Our guide was Micheal and he was informative, accommodating, and a joy to talk to throughout the day. When we go back to Roatan, we'll use Rony's again.

[h2odad]

My wife and I, plus another couple, off the Carnival Valor 4/21/2010, had read about Rony's tours http://ronystours.com/ on Cruise critic and tripadvisor, and decided to go with him the day we were on Routan. We're glad we did. Rony meet us just outside the gates of the Carnival dock, as his instructions directed. We found him to be very polite, humorous, and very knowledgeable about Routan. We had done a lot of reading about all of the ports we would be stopping, so had some ideas of where we wanted to go. We started the day off zip lining at South Shore. Quite exhilarating! We can't compare to the other zip lines companies, but the views were great and we felt very safe.

Next we wanted to do some off shore snorkeling and Rony suggested we try West Bay Beach at BanamaRama area. He lead us to the beach area that had a few small boats that rent out by the hour. We negotiated with one of the operators for the four of us ( he started at $25 pp for the hour, we ended up with $16 pp for the hour). This ended up being the best of the snorkeling we had done on any of the other two ports (Grand Cayman & Belize), we snorkeled. The guide took us out to the local snorkel area, about five minutes away, toward an opening in the reef, marked by a bouy. We found large numbers of fish, and a then a vertical wall of about 20 foot, with clear visibility to the bottom. It was fantastic!

Afterwards, we showered off at the beach shower, Rony then asked if we wanted to eat there, but we wanted to try something less "touristy" and more 'local'. Rony asked if we wanted to try his sister's restaurant. We weren't sure want to expect, but this turned out to be one of the highlights of our week. His sister was in Canada that week, so the restaurant, 'Taste of Paradise', was being managed by his mom. This was a great experience. I had conch, first time for me, and it was great, and very inexpensive (about $8). We talked with his mom for a while and got great insights from her perspective, to the life on the island. We only wish we had more time to spend, but we were only in port for seven hours and needed to get back to the ship. A very good day in paradise! If anyone has questions, you can e-mail me, Cal, at: h2odad96@aol.com

[ooulio]

We did Rony's tours. They were great. He was so nice and took us where ever we wanted to go. Answered our emails right back. I would use them again anytime.