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Published: August 27th 2008
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A long journey (including 5 different chicken buses!) took us from Matagalpa in Nicaragua across the border to Honduras' capital city Tegucigalpa. We had head many bad things about Tegucigalpa and would have avoided it if we could, but it was too late to move on and so we found ourselves taking a taxi into the city centre to get a hotel. Well, I don't know if it is directly because we
weren't meant to like Tegus (as it is commonly known), but we found ourselves not finding it too bad at all. It has some nice architecture and is definitely not a gringo town. We especially realised this when we went for dinner at a bar recommended by our guidebook. It was full of locals drinking beer, eating Mexican food and singing karaoke - great stuff!
The following day we had a few hours to kill in Tegus and so we went to the impressive Museum of National Identity. This contained far too much information for us (especially as it was all in Spanish!) and so we restricted ourselves to some of the more interesting exhibits including the geological development of Central America, the rise and fall of the
Mayas as well as more modern politics.
From Tegucicalpa we moved on to the stunning Lake Yojoa, known as a weekend spot for many of the country's more wealthy residents. We based ourselves at the hotel belonging to the D&D Brewery which turned out to be a great choice. Our room was basic but comfortable and more importantly the hotel had both a swimming pool and a bar/restaurant. In the latter we found that we could have six different flavours of beer, all brewed on the premises. Needless to say that the beer along with excellent Honduran and international cuisine kept us happy for a few days!
The highlight of our time at the lake was an early morning row-boat trip. We were a total of five gringos plus our friendly guide Rafael and we more than managed to fill up the boat. In fact, it is fair to say that if this boat were in a British lake it would have been impounded on health and safety grounds! Still, we went ahead and enjoyed a fun morning. Rafa pointed out plenty of birds, although some of them were a bit too far away to be sure he
was telling us the truth! We did see a gorgeous Toucan in flight though which was definitely a highlight of my (short) bird-spotting career. It was a wonderful experience to be out on the lake so early in the morning, with the sun slowly emerging from the mists to heat us up. On the way back we also lived through far too much excitement when a large motorboat decided to play games with another motorboat on the lake and ended up capsizing. Needless to say, we were very glad to finally return to dry land!
Our final stop in Honduras was at the very pleasant town of Copán Ruinas. This is a nice place to wander around, with cobbled streets, good restaurants and colonial architecture. From the town it is an easy taxi ride to the fantastic Macaw Mountain. This is a large park reserve housing hundreds of Honduran birds who have been rescued after being injured or handed over by people who can no longer cope with the birds as pets. The site is very well laid out, with a definite jungle-feel, and the birds are in large cages or out in the open. By far the best
part for us was the "interactive" section, where we were able to get near to and even hold some of the birds. After trying so hard on previous hikes to spot macaws, parrots and toucans it was almost overwhelming to see them all sitting around in this one area waiting for us!
Our final day in Honduras was spent visiting the spectacular Mayan ruins of Copán. We had previously visited the archaeology museum in town and so knew roughly what to expect, but were still very impressed by what we saw. The ruins cover a large area and contain a number of well preserved temples, stairways and palaces. We particularly enjoyed looking at the stelaes - large stone sculptures with complex hieroglyphic engravings - which we were partly able to understand after our crash course at the museum, although a lot was still indecipherable to us! I was surprised but happy that we were able to climb up onto a number of the temples, which put us closer to the Mayas and provided great views of the rest of the site.
On the way out of the ruins, we followed a "nature trail" that took us through some
tropical forest. It was clear that very few visitors made it to this area which seems a shame as it was a lovely walk. At one point we came across some very well preserved ruins, including a ball court (for the game of "pelota"). We were half hoping that we had made some new fascinating archaeological discovery but quickly realised - having seen information signs - that we were not the first to venture here!
Our final destination was the museum situated at the edge of the ruins. This was well worth a visit, as a fantastic full-scale reproduction of the Rosalila Temple of Copán has been constructed. The temple would originally have been an important building at Copán and it was easy to see the impact it would have had on those who saw it. I had not realised until that point that many of the structures at Copán would have been painted in bright colours - particularly red - and it made the whole site seem even more impressive to me.
Sadly our time in Honduras was far too short and we managed only to scratch the surface. But, what we did see we thoroughly enjoyed
and hope to return to see more one day. Time to keep moving - next stop, Guatemala.
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Ben
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your trip
You need to go o El Salvador before heading to Guatemala. If you plan in goig to Guatemala and then El Salvador you will have to go back and then go into a country you had already been in. So go to El Salvador through la Palma and go to Suchitoto from there you can go west and visit the north west little towns of El Salvador (Ruta de las Flowers) then get in to Guatemala and from there to Belize. Be safe and good luck to you.