Jennifer Cox
Slender green tendrils reach out from the tropical rainforest like the fingers of a trusting child. But behind these delicate creepers squats the vast animal presence of a dense, steaming jungle: a thick, musky 1073km2 pelt of mahogany and cocoa, broad-leafed banana palms, extravagant orchids and vast shivering ferns that stretch in all directions to the horizon.
Here it rises, morphing into ghostly cloud forest as it climbs and then thick pine, before finally emerging as the glorious, mist-crowned summit of Pico Bonito, Honduras’s third-highest peak, and part of the sweeping cordillera Nombre de Dios (name of God) mountain range.
“It’s 2 500 vertical metres of habitat,” said James Adams, with something like paternal pride. As manager of the elegant Pico Bonito Lodge, a collection of secluded, luxurious cabins set in the heart of the fiercely protected Pico Bonito national park, James is used to guests standing on the wide veranda, slack-jawed with wonder at the sight of so much nature.
Honduras is set in the heart of Central America; the country is as picturesquely rugged as it is boisterously lush. Dominated by soaring mountain ranges that channel some of Central America’s major rivers, it offers a verdant habitat for more than 700 species of bird and 200 species of mammal, living in 80 protected wilderness areas and 20 vast national parks (the sprawling La Moskitia — Mosquito Coast — in northeastern Honduras is the biggest and probably most important rainforest outside the Amazon).
The mineral-rich rivers feed the fertile plains that attracted Mayan farmers across the border from Guatemala in the fifth century and the all-powerful American fruit companies (the economic dominance of which arguably created the original banana republic) in the late 19th century.
Honduras boasts 644km of Caribbean coastline, with the idyllic Bay Islands offering easy access to the Mesoamerican barrier reef, the world’s largest after Australia’s. But despite its numerous attractions, Honduras is one of the least visited countries in Central America.
‘Honduras lacks a theme’
By comparison, Costa Rica — less than half the size — receives more than twice as many visitors (two million compared with 830 000 to Honduras).
According to my guide, Walter Villamil, it’s because Honduras has done a poor job of promoting itself. “Honduras lacks a theme,” he explained philosophically. “Guatemala has La Ruta Maya; Costa Rica has its eco-attractions. Honduras has all that — history, nature, culture. We have ethnic groups and colonial towns, too. But tourists don’t know about it, so they don’t come.”
One attraction that does seem to have made it on to the tourist map is Copan, the archaeological site where 3500-plus Mayan ruins, dating from between the fifth and ninth centuries, are scattered over 24km2 of jungle in western Honduras, close to the Guatemalan border.
Eight o’clock in the morning and the heat was already pitiless as Walter and I picked a path between bulging roots and lumps of stone into the dense jungle that engulfed Copan until archaeologists began unearthing the site in 1841.
The Mayans were fond of symbols and legend. They knew how to make an impression. I stumbled from the jungle and found myself in the arresting west (or death) court, a broad, open plaza featuring the first of a series of huge pyramids. A sprawling collection of altars, stelae and monuments were scattered around, their intricate carvings recounting the battles and beliefs of a dynasty of 16 kings who, for five centuries, ruled more than 25 000 people, accomplished in the arts of engineering, astronomy and physics.
Some say sniffily that Copan isn’t as impressive as Tikal in Guatemala, but the quality and condition of Copan’s artefacts is so good that they have informed much of what we know about Mayan civilisation today.
I was staying in Copan Ruinas (known just as Copan), the tiny Spanish colonial town a kilometre away, built on the site of a Mayan settlement.
Charming is an overused word, but the spotlessly clean Copan, set in the lush Copan valley, truly is. Locals courteously wish you and one another buenos dias.
Following the Mayan trail
The few tourists who were around were mostly Hondurans and from neighbouring El Salvador. But the handful of Americans and European backpackers congregated at Twisted Tanya’s: a relatively pricey ($22 for three courses) but unexpectedly gourmet roof-top restaurant run by Tanya, a charismatic British expat.
Everyone seemed to be following La Ruta Maya, the trail of Mayan ruins that leads from the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico down through Belize into Guatemala (and Honduras).
I was more interested in La Ruta Lenca, named after Honduras’s largest indigenous group. It’s a trail of remote villages set along the winding ascent up El Cerro de las Minas, Honduras’s highest mountain (2849m). The Lenca population stands at about 100 000.
Their traditions and beliefs are shrouded in mystery and date back 3000 years, but they are said to include sun worship and a belief in the sacrosanctity of nature.
There is no organised La Ruta Lenca tour and, although a number of regional buses do (eventually) stop at various Lencan towns, a recent storm has washed away key sections of the mountain road.
Walter offered to drive me, an offer I gladly accepted, though I was sad to leave pretty Copan and its lovely cafés (all selling thrillingly good, locally grown coffee). But the four-hour drive was beautiful: swooping, winding roads through dense groves of coconut, mango, almond, fig and pine.
We crossed wide rivers where locals cooled off from the intense heat. Behind them tall wooden drying sheds sat in wide green fields of tobacco, with the vast El Cerro de las Minas mountain rising up beyond. We rose higher, passing through tiny villages where sombrero-wearing men on horseback, white shirts open to the waist, galloped alongside their cattle, whirling lassos. A yellow school bus disgorged smartly uniformed children and women chopped watermelon and pineapple at tiny roadside stalls.
Periodically we stopped at a roadside stall to inspect a hammock or buy fruit.
We made it as far as the small town of Gracias before the road ran out. Like Copan, it has challengingly cobbled streets and stuccoed, tiled-roofed buildings and a main square, this one overlooked by the commanding Iglesia de San Marcos. It is just one of four grand colonial churches in the town and a reminder that Gracias — founded in 1536 — was once an important place, one-time capital of Spain’s Central American empire.
Splendidly remote
But that was long ago: Gracias now feels splendidly remote and bucolic. I didn’t see a single tourist and, as I walked down a clean but badly broken road, I realised that even if Copan is not exactly a Mayan Disney town, it is certainly shaped by tourism in a way that Gracias is not.
The majority of Honduras’s tourists come from the United States, flying into the small, efficiently run airports in San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba and the capital, Tegucigalpa (pronounced Teg-goosie-galpa). Honduras has an excellent internal flight network and it was an easy 30min/55km hop out to Roatan, the biggest of the three Bay Islands.
The Bay Islands have an interesting history: although Honduras was part of the Spanish empire, the Bay Islands were mostly ruled by the British (from 1643 to 1872). They were also home to the original pirates of the Caribbean, with as many as 5000 aquatic outlaws living on Roatan in the mid-17th century.
Nowadays the major attraction is diving. The islands are on a fringing reef system, meaning the coral extends from the shoreline, so you can snorkel to it in minutes. And diving is cheap.
“It’s as good as the Red Sea here,” declared Laura, a dive instructor from London. “Great visibility and really interesting reef life.”
She knew nothing about Honduras before she arrived and now she’s been living here for two years.
“Roatan’s like that,” said Aleksandra Chemeris, a New Yorker and keen diver.
In a quiet cove up the coast Palmetto Bay Plantation is a boho-boutique lodge with high-end self-catering cabins hidden among the thatch of beachside palm trees. Blue crabs scuttled down sandy burrows with an indignant pop and hot air rustled through heavy palm fronds like a sigh as I walked to the boardwalk to meet master diver Laurie Shrader and her captain, the insanely handsome Alberto.
I was a scuba rookie, so Laurie spent the morning teaching me the basics (familiarisation with the equipment, underwater hand signals and so on). Then I was ready for my first dive. Sailing to the dive site took all of one minute. Alberto helped me into my gear and I followed Laurie, rolling backwards off the side of the boat into the Caribbean.
I stuck my masked face under the surface immediately — and there was the reef: 12m of crystal-clear water below. It was an astonishing Atlantis: tropical fish gliding like birds around huge turrets and deep valleys of coral, colourful sponges and grass beds undulating in the current. I took a deep breath and prepared to experience a new world. — Guardian News & Media 2010
The Latin American Travel Association www.lata.org