Honduras: An overview

I've finally found a few moments to start writing about my recent vacation to Honduras with Tracy. Since I left Seattle on the night of February 6, I spent a day in Houston and 8 days in Honduras, after which I flew back to Seattle, unpacked, and then packed up again to fly down to San Diego for two job interviews. I got back from San Diego on Saturday the 17th, and I am drained. It's a good thing I had the foresight to schedule a day of sailing for Sunday!

Regarding the Honduras, I'll start with the brief overview and then my next post will give you the play-by-play, in case you're interested in reading all the gory details. At the bottom of this post, I've included a link to our online photo album. I've taken a page out of my brother's book and done very little editing, so I apologize in advance for the 150 photos you'll have to look through :).

Summary

Honduras was a blast. We (mostly Tracy) did a lot of planning upfront, and everything went according to plan. All the locales and experiences met or exceeded expectations, and we didn't have anything remotely scary happen to us. We visited three areas of Honduras: Copan Ruinas, which is on the western frontier in the hills near the border with Guatemala; La Ceiba area, which is a coastal city with bountiful natural gems surrounding it; and Roatan, which is a Caribbean island about 30 miles away from the mainland and home to some of the (allegedly) best diving in the world. Our main activities included touring the ruins (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and riding horses in Copan; rafting, flatwater kayaking, and chilling out near La Ceiba; and snorkeling, zip lining, and more chilling out in Roatan. To get between the places, we relied primarily on a relatively luxurious bus, and a very nice ferry that took us from La Ceiba to Roatan. The bugs, which we had been warned about, were ravenous but didn't bother me so much. As advertised, the mainland was extremely inexpensive, and then as soon as we got to Roatan, prices were more "American", which shouldn't come as a surprise since Roatan is a growing cruise ship destination. We didn't need to speak all that much Spanish, especially once we left Copan, and managed to do quite well for ourselves. The food was perhaps the most ordinary part of the trip, which came as bit of a disappointment to me, since for me, half the fun of foreign travel is eating! Overall, we didn't run into that many Americans. As most of you probably suspected, Honduras hasn't been that discovered by the tourist crowd, though that is sure to change in the not-too-distant future. It seems to offer pretty much what you'd find in Costa Rica at only a fraction of the price. Wanna invest in tropical real estate? Honduras just might be your ticket. Even though we didn't see much that was American, we did have some funny run-ins with American pop culture. The Jungle Lodge that we stayed allegedly hosted an SI Swimsuit Issue photo shoot a few years ago. The kayaking on Cacao Lagoon happened to coincide with a filming of the Italian version of "Survivor". And lastly, but certainly not least, our Hotel in Roatan played host to "Temptation Island" a few years ago.

Here are all the pictures:

hondruas_feb07