Don’t Skip The Real Honduras

Honduras lies between Guatemala to the north, El Salvador to the west, the Caribbean to the east and Nicaragua to its south. It’s another country that’s often omitted or hurried through en route to the Bay islands due to its dangerous image. It’s listed as the second most dangerous country in the world and its capital San Pedro Sula is ranked the worlds most dangerous and violent city, outside of a war zone. I don’t want to jinx myself now as I’m writing this whilst still in the country but I have found Honduras really safe and the locals I’ve come across have all had much better English compared to Guatemala and El Salvador, and really willing to help with directions and answering questions. I was certain I wasn’t going to let such sensational scaremongering put me off discovering such a beautiful country.

Honduras is one of the most biodiverse and gorgeous countries in Central America. It’s made up of beautiful national parks, rain forests, amazing waterfalls and a lot more to offer then just the Bay Islands, where most backpackers go to dive. 
I spend 10 days in Honduras which was just enough time to see all I had planned but I got caught with lack of buses from El Salvador and spend a few days longer then planned there. Utila, one of the Bay Islands, is one of those places you plan on visiting for four days and a month later you’re still there. We ended up extending by two nights on the island, it’s nearly impossible to leave. 

Honduras is relatively cheap country to travel in by Latin American standards. A local bus for 30 minutes is less than a dollar, a dorm in a hostel is about $7 and a baleada, a traditional Honduran dish of flour tortillas folded over and stuffed with beans, cheese and eggs usually but you can add meat and avocado, will set you back about $1.50. They are delicious and cheap, eat many while in Honduas. 

Getting there for El Salvador/ Antigua:

From El Salvador buses run directly to La Ceiba or to Copan from El Tunco/ the beach area. The shuttle also picks up in Santa Ana in El Salvador along the way. I went from El Tunco to Copan. The shuttle cost $35 and went to Honduras via Guatemala and took about 6 hours.
Shuttles run from Antigua in Guatemala to Copan and la Ceiba. 
At the Honduran border you must pay $3 entrance. For some reason the guy I got at the boarder said they can only take Quetzals (Guetemalan currency) or limpira (Honduran  currency) and wouldn’t take dollars and then would only take Quetzal notes, not coins. I reckon he was looking for a bribe as one person only had dollars and other counters had taken dollars. So if you plan on going to the boarder from Guetemala, keep some Quetzals. 

Copan

Copan is a small town not far from the Guatemalan border and the main attraction is the Mayan ruins and archeological site. It’s a cute town but not much to it bar the ruins. Although there’s a few things to do around it such as hot springs, horse riding and visiting the Macaw Sanctuary. The ruins aren’t as spectacular as the nearby Tikal ruins but worth seeing if you’re passing through. It’s was empty when I went, we got there at 8am as it opened. You can climb the ruins and see beautiful bright macaws flying around overhead. 

I was really sick that day and the day before. I spend my birthday on a shuttle from El Salvador sweating like I was dancing to Mr Brightside in Coppers after the All Ireland Final. My rip roaring temperature had not subsided too much so roaming around Copan Ruins was not high on my interest list that morning so that could have a bit to do with my underwhelmed responsible but I was still able to appreciate the ruins. 

Top tip: if you ever need antibiotics in Honduras, just nip into a pharmacy and tell them the generic name for what you want and they’ll had hand whatever you want over to you with no instructions. Also, ibruofen tablets are 600mg per tablet, not 200mg like at home. Added ipbruofen over dose to my list of ailments that day. 

Where to stay:

Hostel Berakah: this was fine for one night, nothing special to write home about. Paid $7 for a bed. 

La Ceiba 

La ceiba doesn’t have much going on in the town. Apparently it’s a big party town but also has a rep for being dangerous. The beaches are polluted so not suitable to go swimming in. La ceiba is used as the gate way to the Bay Islands, the ferry leaves from here to Utila and Roatan of it is a base to explore the Pico Bonito National park.

Getting here:

There are shuttles that leave Copan and can be booked through the hostel. It leave at 9am to get you to la ceiba for the last ferry to the island at 4pm. It’s a lot more expensive than the public buses and we wanted to leave later to explore Copan and we planned to spend the night in La Ceiba anyway. 

Hedmann Atlas run a private coach from Copan to La Ceiba with a short change over in San Pedro. We thought it was a disaster that the bus was full when we arrived (book your tickets online) but a tuck tuk driver offered to bring us to the public bus which we could take two buses to San Pedro in time to get another bus to La Ceiba. 

The local buses are not like chicken buses in other parts of Central America. They are similar to collective but bigger and they don’t play the ‘how many people can we get onto a 16 seater bus’ game. It took longer then it would have getting the private bus but we saved ourselves $20 or more maybe and weren’t in a rush to la ceiba. The bus said it was due to arrive in La Ceiba at 8.15pm. We arrived at 9.40 pm, and we’re back on Caribbean time. La ceiba is known to be dodgy AF and we were told to arrive during daylight but a taxi was waiting right outside the bus and we got a taxi to the hostel so once you aren’t planning a gander around downtown arriving later should be ok. 

Where to stay and what to do:

Hostal Los Guacamayos: this is a lovely hostel with AC, en-suite dorms, free breakfast of pancakes and fruit with unlimited coffee and they organize tours to Pico Bonito National Park. We organized a tour with a local guide to the park, shout out to Joel, who happened to be a professional photographer and had an eye for the perfect instagram. Strangely enough he lapped up our instagram photo shoots and provided plenty of material on his fancy camera which he emailed me on. The tour of Pico Bonito was $25 for the day and Joel doubled as an Uber driver and took us to Walmart and a restaurant after the national park.

Where to eat:

El Jardín de Susana: not cheap but yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, that is vegetables you see. Good for lunch, I got s massive plate of salad from the salad bar. Oh I have missed a salad bar…

Utila

Most backpackers come to solely The Bay Islands on their stint in Honduras. It is known as THE place to learn how to dive in Latin America. It’s the cheapest place in the world to learn how to dive and get your open water certification. It is also a dreamy place to relax, explore deserted paradise islands, party and enjoy the beaches. 

Utila is the smallest of the Bay Islands and is home to a diverse and small population of Afro- Caribbean and decenendants of English , Dutch and French priates. The Bay Islands we’re once a British Colony and locals don’t consider themselves Honduran, they consider themselves as Utilian. They’re first language is Garifuna and English.

Two ferries leave the island and La Ceiba daily for 600L ($25) each way. It’s no cheaper to buy a return and you can buy them before boarding. The ferries leave La Ceiba for Utila at 9.30am and 4.40pm daily and depart Utila at 7am and 2.30pm. The ferry can be fairly rough but only takes 30 mins.

The main street of Utila is lined with diving schools making it the cheapest place to dive in the world.
I had my advanced and open water so I did a speciality, deep diver. I chose to go with Utila Water Sports as they were small groups and provided gorgeous accommodation just off the Main Street but far enough back from the road away from the noise.

I was the only one diving on my dives with the instructor. The deep diving specialty allowed me to dive to 40m which is fairly bloody deep. We explored a ship wrecked on the first dive with visibility of up to 40m. I’ve never dived in such unreal conditions. The room was lovely with UWS. We had the room to ourselves with AC and a private bathroom. For my friends who were no divers the room was $10. Cheap as chips. Decent and cheap accommodation for non divers is hard to come by in Utila. Utila water sports sorted 5 of my non diving mates out with accommodation and were such a great company to dive with. 100% recommend to a friend.

Things to do in Utila:

Diving– obvs.

Check out the local and private beach. The private beach is amazing for sunset.

Take a boat to Water Cay– we took a boat out to a deserted paradise island with nothing on it bar what you bring yourself. This tiny palm tree filled island is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The water is torquoise, sand is white and coconuts are scattered around the island. It was the best afternoon in Utila. We paid $15 each to head out on the boat and this included entrance to the island. We brought a cooler and a bottle of rum to sip on rum pinas for the day. There is also other islands nearby you can hire for a night. How unreal to be able to hire you’re own island for a weekend?

Rent a quad and take a drive to Pumpkin Hill.

Party at Tequila Tuesday and Thursdays. Utila knows how to party pretty much any day of the week.

Lose your marbles at Dr Johns– Dr John is an American Doctor that was apparently struck off and decided there wasn’t more money in beering than curing people and has a mad 24/7 bar in his house. He will feed you with shots and write you off for the next day. If you go to Dr Johns you will make a ferry in two days time. True story, my friend never made her 7am ferry the morning after she went to Dr Johns and made onto a ferry 3 days later.

Utila is a place you plan to spend a few days and you find yourself a month later. I met so many people who came for a week and two months later they’re still there getting their dive master.

Lago Yojoa

I had great intentions of getting the local buses to the next destination of lake Yojoa but I was a man down and sporting a severe hangover so caved and stuck with the crowd and shelled out for the comfortable private Hedman Atlas bus. This was actually cheaper at the ticket desk ($25) compared to $34 online and brought us straight from the ferry dock to La Guama with a short change in San Pedro Sula.

La Guama is a town near the lake. From here’s we hopped on a short chicken bus (20L) to Pena Blanco. From Pena Blanco we took a tuk tuk to D&D Brewery, our hostel for the next few days.

Lake Yojoa is Honduras largest lake surrounded by cloud forests, National Parks, coffee plantations, pineapple farms, volcanic peaks and waterfalls.

The hostel itself is another attraction of the lake. D&D Brewery is a hostel with a great restaurent, an adventure tour company and yes, it’s own brewery. From the hostel you can organize kayaking, bird watching, hikes to waterfalls, coffee plantations, hikes around national parks and cave tours.

I spent three nights by the lake and managed to fit in a few activities here. If you’re into hiking, kayaking or bird watching you could easily pass four days by Lake Yojoa. On the first day we went to Cerro Azul national park. We could do this hike without a guide and make our own way there by taking two chicken buses and a tuk tuk. The entrance fee to the park was $7 and we did the longest hike which took 3.5 hours and went through cloud forest. The views of the lake from a distance were incredible.

On the second day I went to the Pulhapanzak Falls myself by taking the bus from opposite the entrance to D&D Brewery and asking the driver to drop me at the cascades. It took about 30 minutes to get to the stop near the waterfall. I walked the km down to the waterfall and paid 80L into the park. It is the most impressive and biggest waterfall I’ve seen yet in Central America. It is just incredible. The rainbows are so vivid from the spray off the falls. If you have wet shoes bring them and you just wear a swim suit. Everything gets soaked. This is easily done in 3 hours from D&D brewery by taking one bus headed towards San Pedro Sula.

There’s an option of zip lining across the waterfall or going behind the waterfall. You have to get a tour behind the waterfall and it costs 300L usually but 250L if you are staying in D&D. This is a must do! It was incredible going behind the waterfall. It is so powerful and you get completely soaked from the water. Well worth the $10 to go behind the waterfall.

In the afternoon I went with a guide organised through D&D to the viewpoint over the lake. Its a decent hour hike up to the view point. They say to allow three hours for the hike in total and it costs $10. You have to go with a guide also as its private property. The view over the lake was beautiful.

After 10 days in Honduras it was time to move on to Nicaragua but I was wishing I had more time to spend in this wonderful, diverse country. We booked a Tica bus from San Pedro to Nicaragua, planning on hopping on at Lago Yojoa. The ticket was $40 all the way from San Pedro Sula to Managua in Nicaragua. However, the D&D website was incorrect and there is no longer a Tica bus stop at the lake so in the morning we’re getting a taxi at 5am to a meet the Tica bus at a petrol station on the side of the road. Next update in Nicaragua shall be interesting…

I’ve picked up an eclectic bunch of wonderful people and looks like Tom and Will are headed the whole way to South America so they’re stuck with me. I promised them a shout out.