Honduran sardine buses...and cloud forests

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Parque La Tigra was a great adventure...the park is a described in our guidebook as a cloud forest about an hour outside of Tegucigalpa by bus, easily visited as a day trip, so we set off on Sunday morning for what we thought was a 7am bus. After arriving at the departure location (a gas station), we checked out each bus that came and went, but none of them seemed to be heading to Jutiapa where the park trails begin. Three other travellers and us eventually came together to see if we could pool our knowledge and figure out where to find the right bus. Everyone we asked kept telling us it would arrive soon, but in the end we didn´t leave until 9am. We should have known better than to expect any Central American bus to leave before it was full. Eventually our old school bus, with about a hundred passengers (no exaggeration) pulled out and headed off. The journey turned into our Honduran bus travel initiation - it broke down twice, the second time significantly serious enough that we were all ushered out, and walked the last few kilometres up the hill to the park entrance.

Inside the park itself, we were amazed by how real the label 'cloud forest´is - it was truly like hiking in a forest inside a cloud, with mist everywhere. In some ways it was like rainforests in BC, as there were pine trees mixed in with the more tropical, jungle trees and vines. We had a fantastic few hours hiking, and even toughed it out when the mist turned to rain. Once out of the forest and the park, we walked down the mountain through an old mining area and little villages for another few hours until we finally caught the bus - a very sweaty and tired group of gringos.

Today we had a long bus journey through San Pedro Sula to the town of Copan Ruinas. We splurged on the éxecutivo bus with air conditioning, reclining seats and snacks - we figured we had earned it after yesterday! So far we´ve looked around town, and our plan is to have an early night and visit the Copan ruins early tomorrow morning. Copan is a Mayan archeological site, and is considered to be the Athens of Mayan civilization. In the afternoon we plan to visit a wild bird sanctuary called Macaw Mountain. We´ll think of everyone at home as we sip our fruit smoothies tomorrow night...

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Photos

Cloud forest....
looking up into the canopy of La Tigra

The hikers...
...just before the rain started

Village of El Rosario
This village was formerly one of the most prolific mines in the Americas...over 100 million US dollars in various metals were extracted over 50 years.