Thoughts from Honduras (with pictures!)

Honduras was the surprise of my trip. While natural beauty and outdoor activities are expected in Costa Rica not many people hear about Honduras. Honduras is one of the more politically stable countries in Central America, successfully holding seven consecutive presidential elections (none of them even had to be decided by hanging chads and the Supreme Court!). Of course there was that whole coup d'etat last year but who's counting? The country was devastated by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which killed about 5,600 people and caused approximately $2 billion in damage, a total that was far worse in effect than Hurricane Katrina was in the US. For some perspective, the ENTIRE GDP of Honduras was just $33 billion which means that a full 6% of the entire economy was destroyed by the hurricane. The USA's GDP was $14.6 TRILLION and the US govt. estimates that Katrina did $110 billion in damages or less than 1 percent of the GDP here.

Michael and I traveled from San Salvador to the UNESCO sight at Copan Ruinas by KingQuality bus. This was the first of many adventures we had the two weeks we were traveling as the bus blew a tire at the top of a remote mountain and then broke down again about an hour later. We had purchased a ticket to the city of Copan and it actually said Copan on our boarding passes but found out that the bus merely throws you off at Santa Rosa de Copan which is about an hour away. We were lucky that we hadn't missed the ONE bus to Copan that operates. It's a local bus stopping at all the little villages along the way.
After about an hour we made it to Copan and checked into our hostel. There are more pictures of our hostel on my Facebook page if you'd like to check them out. We stayed at http://www.donudos.com/ which was a great choice. The food was wonderful and the staff was warm and truly friendly.
We wound up spending an unplanned day in Copan because we were enjoying it so much. We took a full morning to see the Mayan ruins that gives Copan Ruinas its name. Marvin was our guide for the tour and he was a great addition to helping us understand the complex. For more information on the ruins click here http://www.copanruins.com/.
Also, we took in Macaw Mountain http://www.macawmountain.com/ and the Enchanted Wings Butterfly House http://10000birds.com/enchanted-wings-nature-center-copan.htm and, of course, the zip line!
Enjoy the pictures below!



Some final thoughts from Honduras....

The people are incredible. The warmth and friendliness shown to us was so genuine. It touched me and for that I'm a better person.

I may never be able to eat tortillas again. The ones from Honduras were heavenly! We would find people selling fresh made tortillas on street corners from baskets with blankets wrapping the tortillas to keep them warm. Walk up, pull out a few pennies and get a stack of hot, fresh and delicious tortillas. Also, they're thick unlike tortillas here which are nearly see through. In Honduras and surrounding areas a tortilla is about a 1/4 inch thick and slightly smaller in diameter than what we see here in the US. One can hear the slapping of the uncooked tortilla into the palms of the women who make them all day long. These are truly hand made by incredibly talented cooks.

We were fortunate to meet our great tour guide/driver/interpreter Daniel who helped us enjoy our time immensely. Without his help we could very well still be wandering the mountains bordering Guatemala. Our deepest thanks!

I'd also like to mention the family we met at the Dunkin' Donuts in Tegucigalpa. A father and his two sons were out for the evening at the mall near our hotel and just happened to sit beside of us and struck up a conversation. We chatted for a solid hour and possibly longer as they practiced their English and we practiced our Spanish. Thank you for your warm welcome to the capital of the country and I think both Michael and I look forward to accepting your invitation to visit the city again and spend some time seeing Tegucigalpa through the eyes of the locals!

Honduras was incredibly lush and green. I wasn't quite expecting it and so I was caught off guard by it.

I can't imagine how some of the coffee is harvested here. We saw LOTS of coffee trees on hillsides that were at least on a 30%-35% grades. I couldn't imagine WALKING up the hillside let alone trying to get something to grow and harvested from it.

The people and the land touched me in a similar way that Cambodia did. While not nearly as poor as Cambodia, the Hondurans showed their wealth of humanity through their kindness, smiles and personalities and I'll have that forever.

For more on Honduras... The CIA has a great internet handbook with information on every country in the world. Honduras can be found here https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ho.html

Also Wikipedia has a great entry on the country here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honduras