GEARFOREVERl1DIVEJUST IN TIME FORTHE HOLIDAYS:YOUR COMPLETEGUIDE TO OUTFITIINGSIX KINDS OF DIVERS

Go Deeper onYour Next DiveEVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOWTO EXTEND YOUR DEPTH RANGE

Beat theDive WreckersHOW TO KEEP NINE COMMONWOES FROM KEEPING YOU OUTOFTHE WATER

Big Thrillsin Honduras

HEART-POUNDINGADVENTURE ABOVEWATER AND BELOW

TheTobago

TwistON THIS L1TILE

DIVE ISLAND,EVERYTHING IS

A L1TILE BITDIFFERENT

WE HIT 800 FEET and keepdescending, which is aboutthe time Karl Stanley turnsoff the lights, turns on the

Pink Floyd and revolutionizes my impressionof the underwater world forever. We're plung-ing headlong into the 12,000-foot CaymanTrench off Roatan in Stanley's three-personyellow submarine, Idabel, and bioluminescentlife forms are swooshing past the viewing ponal,thousands of them, a cascading array of fieryobjects. It's like riding Halley's Comet throughouter space. "Wooooooow," is all I can thinkto say. "Once you get deep enough, 90 percentof everything is bioluminescent," says Stanley,who's been deeper than 2,000 feet in this thing.

"Wooooooow," I repeat, psychedelically.The adrenaline rush actually started early

this morning, before I'd even stepped insideStanley's magic sub. I'd signed on for a seriesof activities that included a no-foot wreck dive,two fabulous wall dives and, during my surfaceinterval, a zip-line canopy tour through thejungle 70 feet off the ground. Now it's night-time, and I'm 1,650 feet beneath the oceansurface, with Stanley using a green laser topoint out chimera sharks, isopods, fish-eatingtunicates and other freaky creatures that neverbreak 1,000 feet.

"Woooooow."I hadn't expected all this. It's not like I'm

in Costa Rica or Belize, where the multi-sportadventure ethic dictates that an outfitter hasyou summiting a volcano before breakfast, raft-ing class-four whitewater by lunch and horse-back riding along the beach at sunset. The BayIslands of Honduras have always been aboutone thing: diving. Perched on the rim of theCayman Trench, Roatan, Utila and Guanajafeature fringing reefs that plunge dramaticallyinto the abyss just offshore, forming some ofthe most dramatic walls anywhere. Divinghere, more than anything, fuels the Hondurantourist economy, and it's the singular reason fordirect flights into Roatan's teeny airport frommetropolises like Miami, Houston, Atlantaand New Orleans.

But that mono-focus is changing. Withincreasing numbers of visitors, improvedtourism infrastructure and resorts offeringeverything from whitewater paddling to deep-sea exploration, dive trips can be spiced upany number of ways. The following is a BayIslands adventure sampler, from which to pickand choose.

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