Sometimes, we get it wrong with initial impressions of a country. Sometimes, it takes a while to get a feel for a place. Sometimes, we change our minds after a couple of weeks. Bolivia was like that. We absolutely loved it… eventually. But Honduras? Well… our last blog concluded that Honduras is nice. Not amazing, just nice. We rather wanted to like it more and hoped that by doing a bit more Honduras travel, it might grow on us. So did it? Eventually?…

Lago Yojoa Honduras travel

Although we had a fab time diving and snorkelling around the islands of Roatan and Utila, we’d had enough of the hot and humid seaside and longed for a bit of mountain air. Lago/Lake Yojoa came highly recommended as an area for some hiking amongst pretty scenery, with plentiful birds and wildlife. Generally, we like to wild-camp in mountains when we can, but this time we had a couple of reasons to be in an organised overlanders’ campsite.

First, Marcus wanted to do some maintenance on Cuthbert and he hates spreading all his tools out in a wild-camp area. Yes, he’s done a couple of roadside fixes, but that’s a ‘bodge-it-and-scarper’ kind of scenario. Here, he wanted time and space to completely disassemble the front near-side wheel-hub to fix a leaky seal. He needed to have all the kit out without worrying about inquisitive local kids prodding around in the tool box.

Secondly, England is about to win the FIFA World Cup 😊. We wanted access to a t.v. where we could watch them thrash Croatia in the semi-final, then pip France at the post, to reign supreme in the world of mens’ soccer! Unfortunately, it didn’t quite happen like that, but by being in an overlanders’ campsite we did at least have a t.v. to watch England lose to Croatia ☹ and go home as proud runners-up. We’re not usually big sports fans so after the semi-final, it was something of a relief to know that we don’t have to watch another soccer match until 2022!

Anyway… Lago Yojoa does indeed have far more to offer than a quiet Cuthbert servicing area and a t.v. We went for walks, pottered around the village, visited caves and waterfalls, and kayaked on the lake. All very… nice.

Finding a smoke

Cutesie mountain towns like Gracias kept us amused for a while and the scenery in the area is quite… errr… nice. Lots of coffee grown around there (which in our now considerable experience of coffee growing regions, always means a pleasant climate) and also lots of tobacco.

Some years ago on a holiday-trip to Cuba, we were interested to see the small-scale cigar producers and ladies hand-rolling the Cohibas. Here in Honduras in Santa Rosa de Copán, we saw cigar production on a much bigger scale in the ‘Flor de Copán’ factory. It was disappointing not to be able to take any photographs in the factory, but we had an interesting personal tour of the all the departments: from leaves arriving, to sorting, fermenting, drying, rolling and packaging. The process isn’t mechanised at any stage and the factory employs hundreds of people working in impressively civilised conditions. It’s an ISO ‘whatever number’ accredited facility and they clearly take the whole health and safety thing quite seriously.

Here’s a (useless) little cigar factoid you may or may not be aware of… did you know that the very last stage of cigar production, even after the wrapping and boxing for shipping, is to bulk-freeze, then thaw the cigars? It’s done in a tightly controlled manner so as not to create any moisture in the tobacco, but it apparently ensures there are no bugs or mites left in the rolled leaves (at least no live ones anyway). See… you learn stuff here!

Mayan Stuff

Our last stop in Honduras, just before the Guatemala border, is the famous Mayan ruins of Copán. Thinking back a bit to when we were in South America around Peru and Ecuador… we saw a lot of Inca stuff. Lots. The old Inca empire dominates the history of that area as far south as northern Argentina, and the remnants are scattered widely across the region. Macchu Pichu is just the tip of the proverbial Inca iceberg. Some of the sites are, of course, very interesting. But after a while we saw so much Inca stuff that we started to get ‘Inca’d-out’. Well, we have now reached Copán, the southernmost point of the ancient Mayan empire and we’re already preparing to become ‘Mayan’d-out’.

The Copán ruins are well worth a visit if you happen to be passing through. Other than the tunnels (don’t bother with these, you can save $15 and 20 dull minutes of your life), the site is well-kept and interesting, but it’s no Macchu Pichu. We’re conscious that we will be seeing much, much more Mayan Stuff as we progress north through Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, so we won’t get too excited about it all yet.

Macaws

The area around Copán turned out to be one of the nicest in the whole of Honduras. Not just Mayan stuff, there’s lots of other stuff to do. We visited a facility for rehabilitating injured macaws back into the wild. It’s a fascinating place where we learned not only about macaws with physical injuries, but with psychological issues too. Curiously enough… it never really occurred to us that macaws might get stressed. But it seems they do. They are complex social creatures, mostly monogamous, and if their relationships go badly they can self-mutilate or even kill their own chicks. These unfortunate but very beautiful birds are being studied and, where possible, helped to socialise with each other before being rehabilitated into the wild.

How was Honduras?

So at the end of our time there, how was Honduras? Well… if we’re honest, it didn’t really grow on us in rampant fashion. All we can say is that our initial impression remains: it’s  ‘nice’. It just seems to lack that ‘Wow-factor’, that certain ‘je ne sais quois’. Maybe we’re being a bit harsh on Honduras, after all… El Salvador is a very hard act to follow. We really have nothing bad to say about Honduras, it’s just that for us, it was overshadowed by its much smaller neighbour. El Salvador had a warmer welcome, more spectacular scenery, better roads, more well-stocked shops, often cheaper prices and finally… I’m sorry to say this Honduras… but your street-food baleadas just don’t come close to the delicious pupusas of El Salvador. I miss those.

But don’t let us put you off going to Honduras. Go there and see for yourself. Let us know if you agree it’s ‘nice’.

Honduras: Mayans and Macaws Gallery