What Honduras lacks in size it makes up for in sheer beauty and grandeur. The mountains of the central highlands are capped with the weeping woods, a beautiful tropical cloud forest. Both coasts are peppered with luscious mangrove swamps and coastal lagoons.
The northeast part of the country is laden with black lagoons and impenetrable jungle; famously known as the Mosquito Coast, this area so remote and unspoiled it is accessible only by air or by boat. Honduras is also home to Copan, considered to be the crowning artistic achievement of the vast Maya empire. Yielding spectacular reliefs and sculpture, it is the most studied of all the Maya sites and is especially notable as the only site where the remains of a Maya queen have been discovered.
Caribbean culture is on full display in the north, where Garifuna villages pepper the shore line. The Garifuna are friendly people, famous for fishing in long dug out canoes. The Garifuna women are known for making casabe, a flat bread made from yuca, as well as pan de coco (coconut bread), both of which they sell from baskets carried on their heads.
DIVING
Roatan, Guanaja and Utila, collectively known as the Bay Islands, are situated 31 miles off the north coast of mainland Honduras, along part of the world's second largest barrier reef system – a scuba diver's dream. Thus, the majority of visitors here come for the offshore attractions.
ECO-ADVENTURE
Out of the water, you'll find just as much competing for your attention. There is prime fishing, kayaking and sailing. Roatan's San Pedro is the largest town in the islands, but size is all relative. San Pedro is still more village than town and nowhere near city status. Many of Roatan's villages have restaurants with international cuisine, but no one will ever mistake the Bay Islands for St. Thomas or any other commercialized Caribbean destination.
Most interesting about the islands are the people who live there. The 30,000 permanent residents on Roatan are descended from several cultures – English, Spanish, Payan Indians, Garifuna, and a mix of Caribbean races.
HISTORY
Until their mysterious decline in about 980 A.D., Honduras was a land peopled by the Maya. Christopher Columbus landed here in 1502, beginning three hundred years of Spanish domination. In 1821, Honduras became an independent nation. A freely elected civilian government was established in 1982 after more than two decades of military rule.
The Bay Islands show evidence of Mayan occupation. Columbus landed on Guanaja in 1502, but the Spanish later enslaved the islanders and sent them to work on plantations in Cuba and in the gold and silver mines of Mexico. By 1528, there were no natives left on the islands. English, French and Dutch pirates then occupied the them, followed by the Garifuna, who were shipped there by the British after an uprising on St Vincent. The people here speak a richly Caribbean version of English and look more to the U.S. and England for direction than the Honduras Mainland.
DON'T MISS
– Touring the Copan Sculpture Museum, including its four story high Rosalila temple replica.
– Exploring Trujillo, where Columbus first set foot and where a Spanish Fort still sits watchful over the town.
– Diving the Bay Islands.
