Port guides, tour notes and booking answers, written by the people who meet you at the terminal gate.
Carnival, Princess and Holland America dock at Mahogany Bay. Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, Celebrity, MSC and Virgin Voyages dock at Coxen Hole. The two terminals sit about 8 kilometres apart on the southwest coast, and both let you walk straight off the pier.
Read the guide · 4 min
Ships in Roatán usually give six to eight hours alongside. After disembarkation and the walk back to the gangway, most passengers have four to six usable hours ashore. Every tour we run is built backwards from that number.
Our representative waits just outside the port exit holding a sign that reads MONKEYLALA TOURS. This works the same way at Coxen Hole and at Mahogany Bay. You do not need to arrange transport or find a shuttle at either terminal.
A tour built for someone staying a week is a bad fit for someone with an all aboard time. What you need is a named meeting point outside the terminal, a driver who knows how port traffic behaves, and a return that leaves a real cushion rather than cutting it close.
Confirm whether your ship docks at Coxen Hole or Mahogany Bay first, because they are not interchangeable pickup points. Then pick one headline activity, wildlife, snorkelling, beach, or something more active, and add one or two stops around it rather than booking four separate things.
For a closed loop cruise that starts and ends at the same US port, you almost never need to carry your passport ashore in Roatán. Your ship's key card is what the terminal and the gangway check. Honduras clears the ship as a group, so passengers do not go through individual immigration.
For a shore excursion, 10 to 20 US dollars per person for a half day and 15 to 25 for a full day is the range most cruise passengers use, given directly to the guide at the end. Restaurants add 10% service to the bill already, so anything on top is optional.
Still deciding how to spend your port day?
Send us your ship and date. We answer from the island, usually within minutes.