`Honduras??!!” Friends shrieked in disbelief when the subject of our next vacation came up. People go to Central America to dive in Belize or eco-tour Costa Rica. But Honduras? The country for which the term “banana republic” was coined?
Call us crazy, but that’s where we went. I’d become interested in the country thanks to a Honduran native whose intermediate Spanish course I took at the New School.
My wife and I have traveled extensively in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, so we’re not afraid of roughing it. In fact, we welcome them. Besides, we couldn’t get a flight to Baja California, our first choice.
What we found in Honduras was that even though this desperately poor nation of 6 million people isn’t ready for primetime — the tourist infrastructure is rudimentary — adventurous travelers will encounter plenty of exotic attractions. Just bring your Spanish phrasebook, drink bottled water and ignore all those uniformed guys — military, police, security guards — toting automatic weapons.
We flew into San Pedro Sula, the country’s major industrial city, which also boasts its biggest airport. S.P.S. is a flat, dusty metropolis of little charm that serves best as an overnight stop before pushing off to other locales.
That’s exactly what we did — headed for the Caribbean coast 60 miles away, where we were booked into a seriously funky little hotel called The Last Resort. After driving for 90 minutes over a variety of (mostly good) road surfaces through lush but relatively flat farmland, we saw a teeny sign pointing to Tornabe, our destination.
A roughly surfaced dirt road gave onto a muddy, potholed track through the jungle. Barely wide enough for our car, the road passed cow pastures, high grass and dense foliage before emerging into Tornabe, a town where pigs roam the streets, children wrestle in the mud, and the housing stock is either thatched huts or concrete block.
The village is inhabited by the Garifuna, descendants of West Indian slaves who settled in Honduras in the late 18th Century after the British kicked them out of St. Vincent. The Garifuna live mainly as subsistence fishermen and have maintained their African roots, speaking a pidgin mixture of French, African and Arawak tongues.
Our hotel was at the end of the village, next to a small lagoon: nine basic wooden cottages, no hot water, fans to cool us down ($44/double; reservations: 011-504-482-545. There are no phones at the hotel).
The small restaurant served tasty meals of freshly caught fish, and mornings at breakfast we sat and watched as a rudimentary canoe service carried the exotically attired Garifuna (many of the women wore head scarves and brightly colored caftans) from one end of the lagoon to the other. As far as we were concerned, we might have been in Africa.
The country has plenty of natural wonders, but many of them are accessible only by four-wheel drive, over water or with tour guides. One of the parks can only be reached by taking a small, human-powered railroad car about 5 miles to the visitor’s center. Compared to the easily accessible national park infrastructure in Costa Rica, getting to Honduras’ treasures is work.
Bad weather ruined our opportunity to see two eco-sites near Tornabe, but we did manage to hit the Jardin Botanico Lancetilla, a vast botanical garden featuring thousands of plant and animal species.
While there, we saw lots of chileros, a small yellow-breasted bird ubiquitous in these parts, plenty of green parrots, fire ants and a slew of butterflies in every imaginable color (the butterflies alone are worth the trip).
Set on the western edge of the San Pedro Sula-Trujillo highway, which runs along the Caribbean coast, the bustling but dumpy town of Tela was once a major banana port and railroad center.
United Fruit and other agricultural companies practically ruled Honduras for much of this century (export taxes paid by U.S. fruit companies once accounted for most of the Honduran government’s revenue).
Tela is where you see their former hegemony. There’s a rotting railroad pier jutting out into the Caribbean, once used by the banana barons to offload product from trains onto waiting ships. Stand on the pier and to the left and right you see housing once used by the gringos who ran United Fruit. Smack in the center is the enormous (Grand Central-size) abandoned station of the Tela Railroad Co. The railroad still exists, but it’s now government-owned. Besides, most bananas, still a Honduran staple, are now hauled to port by truck.
The Gringos lived pretty well here. We stayed at Villas Telamar, a city within a city composed of 97 villas that once housed managers of United Fruit. The villas range from magnificent three- and four-bedroom houses to smaller wooden edifices that have been subdivided into kitchenettes. Facilities include shops, pool and tennis courts ($80/double; 011-504-48-2196; fax: 011-504-48-2984).
Two and a half hours south of San Pedro Sula, accessed by a highway that winds through fertile valleys and spectacular mountain vistas, sits Copan, a Mayan ruin that is the country’s major tourist attraction.
Copan was at its height between the 5th and 9th Centuries A.D., then was abandoned because of war and famine. Excavation of the site began in the late 19th Century and continues to this day.
The ruins aren’t as mind-blowing as Mexico’s Chichen Itza or Guatemala’s Tikal, but they are extensive, relatively well preserved and not overrun by tourists. Almost as interesting is the mammoth new archeological museum on the site, which boasts statuary from the ruins and an impressively full-scale, full-color (reds and greens) recreation of one of Copan’s main buildings.
The nearby town of Copan Ruinas is quaint, cobble-stoned, filled with decent hotels, a variety of restaurants and souvenir shops (Honduran handicrafts are decidedly second-rate).
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Although this is one of the more visited areas of the country, it seemed emblematic of where Honduras stands on the world tourist scene: the people are friendly and eager to please, and there’s plenty to do if you’re willing to put up with a certain amount of adventure and discomfort.
But the poverty is disconcerting. The police seem to be corrupt, and there are definitely too many armed men (you don’t feel more comfortable because they’re in uniform). Honduras wants your tourist dollars, and it’s a fascinating work-in-progress. But there’s still a long way to go.
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Getting there: Traveling from Chicago is a bit complicated and costly. On the low end it costs $750 one way for the first leg of the trip. A consolidator may cut the price in half; check the travel pages for advertisements. American (800-433-7300) flies to San Pedro Sula from Miami, only two hours away. Continental (800-231-0856) also flies to S.P.S., but you have to change planes in Houston, then fly to Tegucigalpa first (Tegus, as the locals call it, has one of the scariest air approaches on Earth). A new state-of-the-art terminal in S.P.S. (quite impressive, given the status of public works in the country) should be finished by now.
Where to stay: Hacienda el Jaral, a working plantation, which also houses a delightful mountain resort, is in the town of Santa Rita, about 6 miles from the Copan ruins. The resort features charming little cottages ($66/double, hot water and air conditioning) with folk art decor, a game room with pool tables and widescreen TV, a pool, restaurant, and diversions like horseback riding and tubing on the local river. The staff is friendly and will also organize tours of the local sights.
You can write to them at P.O. Box 1006, San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Central America. Phone: 011-504-52-4457 or fax: 011-504-52-4891.