Honduras Travels

If you want to visit a cloud forest while trekking through Central America, hopefully you’ll check out Parque Nacional La Muralla in Olancho, Honduras. This park has one of the better infrastructures in Honduras, allowing visitors the opportunity to experience the beauty and richness of Honduran tropical forests.

When you arrive in La Union, the closest town to the park, give yourself a day to set up the transportation and guide service. (You can travel to the park on your own, but a local service has been set up which helps the community and provides invaluable details and assistance for the traveler). Guide service starts at 30 lempiras or lemps, though this will likely increase some in 1997. Prices are negotiable.

COPAN, HONDURAS–Lying on the open-air yoga platform at the Hacienda San Lucas, a rustic but chic adobe resort, I try to ground my body and lengthen my spine, but really, I’m here for the view.

Spreading out below me are the lush Honduran mountains, the green river valley and, though I can’t see them from my lizard-like pose, the Mayan ruins of Copan.

Normally 8 a.m. wouldn’t see me doing anything remotely physical, but the chance to do yoga on a hill overlooking the ruins is just a great way of soaking up the atmosphere.

By Jolyon Attwooll

Whoever named Copán Ruinas had it easy.

A town springs up by mysterious Maya ruins in Honduras’ Copán Valley? Presto, just link the location to its main attraction.

Visitors often presume this tranquil town near the Guatemala border is all about the archaeology: Not true. If you only stop at the amazing Maya excavations - granted, no Central America jaunt is complete without doing so - you’ll miss the small town’s many beguiling charms.

Just take a look beyond the town’s buildings. From the outskirts you can watch morning mist unfurl around Guatemalan mountaintops. From the sloping streets, you can gaze out over the lush Copán valley.

ROATAN and COPAN RUINAS, Honduras

The woman on the plane studiously memorizes tropical fish. She pores over a picture of a blue tang, contemplates the features of the banded butterfly fish and wins respect by focusing on the mean-looking six-gill shark.

She is a diver, she says, and she wants to know what she is seeing under the sea.

She will see a lot, since the coral reef that surrounds Honduras’ Bay Islands is one of the largest and most diverse in the world, home to as many as 800 different types of fish.

The Factory

San Pedro Sula is known as the AIDS capital of Central America. It’s not the type of place I normally visit. There are gangs and drugs. It’s a big city with lots of poor people.

Today, is a sunny Sunday and people crowd the shaded areas of the central park people-watching. Every square-inch of shade is taken so I stroll.

People chat while sipping on plastic bags of fruit licuados through limp straws. Ice cream cones melt rapidly making knuckles sticky. A man selling plastic snakes has one of his snakes nibble at a passing pretty girl. He smiles like it is some brilliant strategy that should be documented in the annals of flirting: “Hey baby. I sell plastic snakes for a living. Wanna go out?”

The nail has yet to be driven, but the spot has been picked out on the living room wall of the Richt house.

It’s there, in the room where it will be seen the most, the Richts will hang a wood carving of a Honduran village as a symbol of a mission trip they will never forget and a place they know they will return to one day.

Closer to home, Mark Richt coaches campers with cancer at Camp Sunshine in Rutledge.

“We are going to go back,” Georgia football coach Mark Richt said.

In the morning of May 21, 2007 we were advised that the entire Finca had no water. This phenomenon of the random shutting off of water and power by the municipality is very common in Central America. We were not in need of showers as we had planned to take an arduous hike in Pico Bonito National Park.

People who have visited Honduras and will talk of the Bay Islands lifestyle, or the famous ruins near Copán. I agree that, in terms of tourism, they are indeed the undisputed heavyweight champions, yet there is much more to this diverse Central American nation than sun, sea, and statues.

After a month of exploration in El Salvador, we began to hanker for the relative creature comforts afforded by the Central American Gringo Trail. From the Salvadoran border town of Perquín, we planned to cross into Honduras and head directly to Copán - a distance totaling 160 miles. We would pass through Marcala, Gracias, Santa Rosa de Copán, and La Entrada en route, and arrive at the final destination the following morning – in time for a generous portion of yoghurt and granola, a breakfast option solely available in tourist hotspots.

Upon my arrival in Honduras, my initial thoughts were, “OK, another vacation.” After two weeks away from home, “vacation” ceased to apply. I was living in Honduras and would live there for six weeks.

After riding in a packed bus without air conditioning, we arrived in El Obraje and hitchhiked in the back of a pickup to reach our host family. Don’t be alarmed: Hitchhiking in Latin America is the equivalent of taking a taxi in New York, and it’s free.

El Obraje is a serene community: Everything is green, butterflies are everywhere. After a 20-minute uphill hike with 50 pounds of luggage in 113-degree heat, I arrived at my host family’s home.

An Inland Empire marine biologist is on his way to Honduras this month for a turtle awareness biological tour and will take four Yucaipa Valley locals with him for the experience.

Dr. Stephen G. Dunbar is heading up a group of 10 people from Loma Linda University on an eight-day tropical, marine biology excursion starting Sept. 10.

Tagging along for the adventure will be Cindi and Kenneth Wright and Elmar and Darilee Sakala. While some participants on the official university trip will receive academic credit, the class is geared toward non-specialists interested in learning more about tropical, marine environments.