Honduras Travels

Hostel: Tegu Airport Backpackers

Rating: 5

Address: From TGU - Tegucigalpa’s Toncontin International Airport, 600 meters east and about 400 meters south. TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS

Phone: +1-610-602-5023

Email: tegubackpackers@yahoo.es

Getting There: Just email them first, and they will send you a map and directions on how to get there. It’s only about 10 minutes walk from the airport, or you can take a taxi in a couple of minutes.

Price: $12 per person twin share. Includes great service and breakfast, and includes internet and bottled water.

In a Honduras town, two moms and four kids learned a little Spanish — and a lot about trust.

By Steve Hendrix

The last shred of the bubble popped on their eighth day in Copan. A couple of suburban American mothers, walking up the street in this hilly mountain town in western Honduras, saw a motorscooter taxi careen by in the usual helter-skelter way. These red tuk-tuk cabs are the transit water bugs of Copan, scuttling around town, picking up passengers and depositing them a few blocks away for a handful of lempiras. Sometimes entire families of five or six would jam into the three-wheeled carts for a bouncing ride over the cobblestones. But in the back seat of this one were just two tiny blond heads, instantly recognizable to the surprised moms as their own youngest children, a couple of pre-kindergarten tourists on their own in Central America.

At the Rotterdam Hotel I met two Canadians, Cindy and Drew, who were heading for the Utila ferry early the next morning. We all shared the cab which turned out to be the smartest move for the price to the ferry docks is fixed. Whether your one or five the trip will run you 6US, which for here is pretty steep.

Reefs off Roatan a magnet for the snorkel, scuba set

Ken Rockburn
CanWest News Service

Sunday, October 30, 2005

ROATAN, Honduras - Just a scant 55 kilometres off the coast of Honduras, Roatan is the largest of the three Bay Islands that are a magnet for snorkellers and scuba divers from around the world.

Stretching 65 kilometres long and just three kilometres wide at its thickest, much of Roatan’s north coast is paralleled by a coral reef second only in length to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

Dodging the Bullet
By Derek Lalonde

So I was in La Ceiba Honduras. December 2003. It’s at the waning weeks of a four month trip. I’d just done some scuba diving. Just dallied with an ultimately doomed romance with a woman ten years younger than me. Just decided that it was time to head back up to Guatemala. I was out for a walk at night. La Zona Viva in La Ceiba. A dirt road strip of bars numbering about thirty. Some would say it was a little rough down here. But everyone had been friendly so far. It was a lull in the tourist trade, and every one of the bars would have been happy to have my dough.

By Devin Foxall

What We Offer

Here’s a memory:
Step off the air-conditioned bus into an eddy of barefoot children; try to say hola to every pair of eyes; feel the tiny hands take our bags and carry them away in a dusty stream.

Quick impressions ambush me in Santa Ines, a small village in the northwest of Honduras, the poorest country in our hemisphere after Haiti. First, and most oppressive, is the heat: an itchy blanket at the sun’s birth and death, a cauldron at midday. Second, even before the sweep of poverty hits, is the extensive variety of smiles. Whether euphoric or tranquil, with modestly closed lips or toothy grins: there is always a happy face to welcome mine.

The beaches of Tela are rubbish ridden. But at seven am last Wednesday morning, one group of people sought to change this.
A loud Caribbean marching-band met with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) volunteers and school children from Tela to knock some sense into local residents.
It was a wake up call for the people of Tela and education for the youngsters on beach cleanliness.
One hundred Japanese volunteers, celebrating 30 years of JICA, took 200 Honduran children by their hands to clean up the trash on the beaches of Tela.
They marched through the streets of Tela making a show of their objectives: “Not only people live on the beach,” and “keep our beaches clean” their banners proclaimed.
Local residents were impressed by the show. An elderly local commented that he was pleased “to see such motivation early in the morning,” and welcomed the activism despite exceptionally high noise levels at such an early hour.
“We want to clean the beaches because we also want to promote Japanese tourism and cleanliness is important in this regard,” the Director of JICA Honduras, Tatsuo Suzuki told HTW.
Mayor of Tela, Daniel Flores, also marched with the group. “The image of Honduras is important,” he said, adding the question, “if Hondurans can come here then why shouldn’t others?” He was talking about the perceived potential of Tela becoming a major tourist destination, if only the image could be improved.
The mayor participated in the march but did not join in to get his hand dirty picking up the trash. A media colleague said that in some ways “Hondurans feel embarrassed by being shown what do and how to do it.”
Attitudes towards garbage also play a large part in this inaction.
Tourism official for the Tela Municipality, Vanessa Merlo, said that “you don’t invite someone into your house unless it is clean, it is a cultural thing which needs to be tackled at a profound sociological level,” and this is why education and awareness, as displayed this week, are important to change this.
The consensus in Tela is that people want to improve their image.
The streets of Tela are arguable some of the cleanest. Flores prides himself on this achievement.
During Semana Santa, however, national tourists flock to Tela for the annual gathering and the beaches are left a dump. “It is the national tourists that create the mess not the foreign tourist,” Merlo points out.
Flores was very pleased that JICA volunteers would come to clean up during these and other times, but his frustration was apparent. “People can take cleaning into their own hands, resources need not be overstretched for something that people can do themselves,” he said.
Other problems continue to persist further down the coast from Tela. Garifuna populations have been entirely neglected by local government and are still using the ocean as a sewage dump.
They are unknowingly destroying miles of beautiful, untapped beaches to the south of Tela which could be revived and enjoyed.

I’m standing on the beach near Chepa’s White Hole looking across 18 miles of flat calm water.

It’s a crystal clear day so the view is amazing. At 8000 ft/2400m Pico Bonito is the highest peak in Honduras.

Right now clouds rise around it like a great crown. I can even see the valleys clearly.

The tide is slowly ebbing and I can feel the beginnings of a cool southerly breeze.

Small fish hide among the turtle grass for protection from larger predators, sandpipers pick their way through the surf looking for breakfast, I have a clear sense that a new world has just been created …

Hello, fellow travellers! Wow, it´s been over a month since I left the states and I´m only now getting around to sending an update. Really, the only excuse I have is that this Peace Corps training is serious business! Every day Im at school from 7:30 until 5 pm and all but one of my weekends so far have had something scheduled.

Busy, yes. However, that doesnt mean that I havent been having a grand ole time! This has been one of the most sureal experiences of my life so far. Its as if Ive entered a time warp and am right back in highschool: from the regimented schedule, to my 3 square meals a day, to the constant stream of bad eighties music (which, apparently, I missed desperately?).

Comayagua: Main highways have been damaged due to sinkholes between Siguatepeque and Comayagua. This is a major route between San Pedro Sula and the capital, Tegucigalpa.