How did this happen? How did a woman from land-locked Utah end up owning a beach house on Roatan? I grew up riding horses in some of the most beautiful country in the U.S. - my parents owned a guest ranch in Northeastern Utah, so to some extent, the hospitality industry formed me.

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t want to dive. I didn’t know a single person who did, but I knew that someday I would be a diver. And I’ve been diving since 1997. Diving creates community. It is an intangible thing – but if you are a regular diver, it is almost certain that you have met other divers who have become part of your network. Every diver becomes a steward of the ocean – the world’s most important resource. It provides endless wonder and provokes thought about our world and how we live in it.

From Cozumel to Roatan to Bonaire to Grand Cayman to Belize to Little Corn Island to the Caribbean side of Panama (where I saw a black jaguar in the forest) I can honestly say that I have been to all the Caribbean dive destinations I need to go to. Coco View is home. Once you have found nirvana, why keep looking?  Roatan is 2.5 hours by air from mainland America and I found all the diving I need there without having to cross an International Date line. Easy travel, beautiful diving, wonderful experiences.

Roatan Island has been a diver’s paradise for decades. Still relatively unknown outside of the diving world, it is located 35 miles off the coast of Honduras. It is rich with tradition and there are no big box stores.

On my first trip to Coco View in 2004, I walked down the beach and took a photo of a house. And promptly forgot about it for a while. But the seed of owning a beach house had taken root.  Over the next 11 years, I made 19 trips to Coco View (many of them for two week stays) and during a couple of those trips I took more photos of the house. I didn’t even realize – until two years ago – that the only beach house photos I took in all those years were of this house. We were destined to be together.

I hope that you will let me share the Casa Azul experience with you. It has a piece of my heart, and I hope it will capture a bit of yours as well.