There are many lesser known attractions for those, who have plenty of time in Honduras or live here. The lake, the Pacific coast, artist villages, mountain coffee villages, and of course my site are excellent options to see the real Honduras or one less traveled.
Amapala is the village on the pacific, which offers calm beaches without the tourism boom of the north. The best part is that it is largely safe, inexpensive, personable, and culturally different than the north. The south coast has Spanish Hondurans with a classic island colonial village. The island is a dormant volcano, which provides an easy climb and a nice view, albeit the climate is quite hot. There are plenty of boat taxis, so you can visit a small island for the day for a couple of dollars. The trip from Tegucigalpa will take you through Nacaome, the hottest part of Honduras, which is aptly given the name of the devils home. Still, shortly after leaving Tegucigalpa, you will find a famous restaurant with a zoo attached for no extra fee. There you can see ostrich, countless snakes, monkeys, and take a ride on the banana chairs through a wild animal park, little small but fun for its being made from banana carriers. The restaurant is in the cool mountains, so this provides relief from or prior to the heat of Amapala.
Valle de Angeles is well known for its arts and crafts, as well as Santa Lucia for its colonial architecture. Still, these are not nearly as nice a rumored or are not traditional. They have been built up and offer a nice fun park right before Valle with swimming horseback riding & a pool, while there is a petting zoo as well. The prices for artisan are high, while the quality is pretty good. Also the restaurants are plentiful, yet priced for the rich from Teguc, so nothing amazing, yet are generally better than the standard fare. The best day to visit is Sunday, when the village is overrun by tourists, as there is a live military band that plays. La Tigre is a nice national park up the hill from there, yet is not safe to walk due to crime. Still, it has really improved from its former mine environmental degradation maintained policy from a US government supported Honduran government. The history of Tigre is sad, as most of Honduras’s history, yet currently it is quite beautiful.
Ojojona is in my opinion a more typical Honduran village with less tourism, yet more art. This is where most of the art is actually produced for resale in Valle. Thus, you can usually get the same stuff for about 2/3 the price, if not half price. They have horseback riding, a nice park, a church, and famous painted caves nearby. The caves are a bit hard to find, yet hang to the left after crossing the river or ask a kid to show you the caves. If you stay the night, do not stay at the local hotel, which is horrible. The owner makes the staff clean out the waste from the toilets with their bare hands, while treating them like animals. Also the hotel is very poor on services, friendly staff, & amenities. Stay with the Italian American at the entrance of the village, who charges more for cabins, yet makes the experience much better, plus his food is great. Otherwise, Ojojona is famous for being the filming location for Amor y Frijoles or love and beans, which is one of the two internationally or at least nationally known films.
The lake has some great fish & Bobs D&D brewery and hotel. These are some of the best places to go to get away from the main tourist locations. The lake has a nice waterfall, a bit slippery, with canopy & kids jumping off the waterfall etc. The village Peña Blanca has many touristic things to buy and a bus takes you to the waterfall, which is the main tourist attraction, besides the shallow calm lake. The lake is a marsh that used to be the main location of the Indian population, until the Spanish forced them to leave, like the trail of tears, so that they could better extract some medicinal cure plant in a boom and bust. Nevertheless, the Indians, who used to live there, now live far away in the mountains.
My favorite village, minus my own, is San Luis Planes, which is a small mountain coffee farming community. It is just a bumpy bus ride or a fast hitch hiking ride up from Pena Blanca. This will leave the hot lake for a cool fresh mountain village nearly at 1500 meters. Food is cheap $2, yet only the standard Honduran fare. The mountains leave you in awe, gaping at the beauty of every sunset, sunrise with mist and clouds rolling in and out through the many peaks jutting out in a plateau at the base of el tigre. This mountain is the second largest in Honduras, yet lacks the waterfalls and prevalence of water, which one finds at Celaque. Regardless, the mountain itself is impressive to hike or just see daily. The locals have some of the best coffee of Honduras; Green Mountain is the name of the Coop there, which is fun to see in action, as their processing is very good. Ask for Lucas or Alex, who will be happy to talk with you, sell some coffee or explain the process. Interestingly, due to its high altitude, the coffee season ends in May, instead of March like the rest of high altitude coffee here.
They have a well organized tourism group, so ask around for them. There is basically not phone reception there, except for along the mountain, as the peaks hinder any reception. Also the bus leaves really early at 6am, so you should probably ask around to find a ride or get on one of two buses that both leave at the crack of dawn. The bus is poor, so it pays to find a ride, which is common, as most work or have to shop in the city daily. Thus, get up wait by the road and or talk to the locals regarding the next car out of town.
Naturally, I must say that San Juan has the best people, great sites, and a real Honduran feel. The worst place to be, however, is the triangle, which is where you can see half dead Honduran men howling into the sand or just dead drunk asleep in the dust. The town is dry, yet there are 3-4 friends of the local influential people, who take advantage to sell to drunks. This location is to the south of town, which has roads leading to the Frontier with El Salvador and La Esperanza. We call it the armpit of San Juan, so enter the village to the north to get away from the drunks. There are several excursions possible from San Juan. The most popular is the triple waterfall of the gnomes, which takes you past some of the best coffee of the town, Sergio, Renan, Nitcho, & others have beautiful farms with internationally renowned coffee. The path to the falls is not for the old or unfit, as it is in disrepair, as is Galdy’s tourism group. This is largely due to the tour being priced around $50 (they priced themselves out of the market) without taking into account backpacker’s budgets, as well as their basically not having done anything since 2002 to maintain or improve trails or really anything. Still, ask for Alexis, who would do a walking tour for less. He is very knowledgeable, tells great stories, & lives in the center of town by the vegetable market.
The village has been booming from coffee, so you should ask for Adin visit Coarene or Francisco for Fundecassa and ask them about their coffee or even have a roasting or to learn about coffee. The coffee has allowed for a boom in hotels, so you have a choice of some 5. I would recommend Martin’s, which is right off the road passing the heartless nude statue of the men on the left. Otherwise, there is a new Juniors hotel that may charge more than the 200 lps, normal price of the rest. You can get the cheapest room in front of martin’s bodega, which has the best view of the mountain, yet 120lps or $6 gets you little comfort. Naturally, the best view of the mountains can be had from the football/soccer field of the mountains, so visit there around sunset or sunrise for an impressive view or on the weekend to see everyone watching the game and talking of local politics, coffee, or intrigues.
Some excursions worth your while are to visit a coffee farm, Nitcho’s pool, and the canyon. The long trip to the back side of the mountain Puca takes you through Cangual or some great coffee growing areas. The most impressive coffee farm has two waterfalls cutting through its farm almost at the peak. I hear the coffee is good, yet in need of some improvements. Nevertheless the view & the hike lead you along a road, countless impressive views, waterfalls, tiny houses with kids playing. The hike starts at the not so hot springs of Don Nitcho, which would be a nice stop over after the hike. While the pool is smaller, less beautiful, cooler, it costs 30lps, which is cheap for foreigners, yet more expensive for locals than the one in Gracias. Nevertheless, it is nearly entirely visited by locals with families and kids playing in the wading area, while the 5 foot pool is left empty, due to few being able to swim. The canyon is nice for a quick getaway into the aldeas or poor hillside suburbs. There you can see a dual waterfall disappear into the ground. The canyon has different plants and gives one a thrill of descending into a canyon, which suddenly emerges from the back of a cow pasture from two small streams.
The best food can be had at Comedor Paty’s, which provides healthy portions at a decent price. Otherwise, the village has a famous artist, world renown with exhibits in Korea, Italy, USA etc. The park is filled with his naked ladies, the Honduran family, the wife of Lempira, as well as the road having heads, nursing mothers and his latest statues. The park is a great place to relax or sit to talk with the locals, who gather at sunset to chat about town gossip or just unwind. Alexis also helped with the statues, so he is an excellent source of information. There is internet access, phone service, electricity & soon to come sewage system, so maybe you can drink the water, as I do hahaha. It took me some 6-7 months to become accustomed to it. The best cure for the runs is Oregano tea or chamomile. The first being a sure fire way to stop everything but bacteria, while the other reduces the pangs of a minor one.
What are some lesser visited attractions in Guatemala or Honduras? Have you heard of any of these places? Do you have any questions regarding the sites, or more detailed information etc?
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