Our quick trip through Honduras

Honduras was such a pleasant surprise.  We had heard that it was dangerous and that few overlander's spend time in the country so didn't know what to expect nor did we know what we should do, we just had a direction, north east towards the northern Honduras/Nicaraguan border.  After exploring Honduras we are so happy that we took the time and explored it, if even for a few days, and know that this will be a country we return back to! 

April 16^th – Leaving the established route

Kendra wanted to see sunrise at the volcano and what a site it was to see. We had camped at the vehicle camping/parking lot in a mix of pine and palm trees.  When we got to the mirador we counted 40+ tents set up which was double the amount we had seen last night.  We had a quiet night with only two empty collectivos to share the parking lot with, but the mirador must have been busy and probably loud.

At 5:30 am we went to see sunrise; Rupert refused to leave the van and kept sleeping. There was the sounds of some music playing and people talking waiting for a spectacular sunrise.  Unfortunately for all of us, the sunrise was rather anti-climactic due to clouds and possibly pollution.

We headed back to the van to catch our beauty sleep because today was the day we would leave El Salvador and head to Honduras.  For some reason, we always tell ourselves that since border days are stressful we are going to plan to get to the border early, do all the necessary paperwork, and then find a place to sleep for the night. Spoiler alert, this would not be the case today as we already started in breaking this “plan” by seeing sunrise. By the time we woke up again and packed up it was closer to 9:30 meaning we got to the Honduras border around 10:30.

The El Salvador side of the border was clean and easy to complete. Everyone was so friendly directing us where to go and even apologizing for not speaking English and making us wait 2 minutes!!  The only confusing part was immigration as we do not get a stamp to enter El Salvador and thus don’t need to be “stamped out”.  When we got to immigration we actually thought we were at the Honduras immigration meaning our questions really confused the immigration women.  But again she was helpful and pointed us toward Honduras.  Leaving El Salvador officially and heading towards the Honduras border was an experience in itself with various women of the night, beckoning truckers to the sketchiest hotels we had ever seen.

Since we were crossing on a Sunday we exchanged some USD for Lempira (Honduras’ currency) since we had to pay in cash with exact change since all the banks were closed.  The border was pretty easy, the most confusing part was ensuring Honduras knew we were not transiting through the country that we were actually visiting it.  99.9% of overlanders seem to skip Honduras, and for a somewhat good reason; it is the most dangerous country you go through on the Pan American highway, but we didn’t want to do two borders in one day and had researched safe areas to explore.  We decided to explore Honduras for 4 days and leave the established overlanding route.

To enter Honduras you needed to get prior authorization from the Honduran government, which we had done, have your covid vaccination checked, go through immigration and then import your vehicle. After completing all these tasks relatively easily we headed towards SEPA, the agency to import the dog.  Lots of people don’t bother but we had heard failure to import the dog can cause issues with Costa Rica (for some reason) so we had to do a u-turn and head down the truckers route back towards El Salvador.  The truckers all seemed quite confused when they saw us and our handsome dog but after submitting the paperwork and the Honduran government requiring a (cute) photo of the dog for their records we were off.

We had two plans for our first day in Honduras, which one we would do was dependent on the time we finished the border.  If we were done before noon, we would get to the historical capital of Honduras, Comayagua, if it was after noon we would head to the Valle de Angeles area.  We finished all our tasks at 11:57 so we headed directly north to Comayagua.

We had heard the roads in Honduras were bad, so we were mentally prepared for a slow drive, surprisingly we found some of the best roads we had driven on.  There were no posted speed limits but we knew in El Salvador the speed limit on these roads were 90 to 100 km/h, so we set the cruise control to 90 km/h and headed down the road.  This lasted for 20 kilometers when we turned the corner and saw police lights flashing, we were being waved over.

Turns out the maximum speed limit in Honduras was 80 km/h and they had us on photo radar going 90 (they were even happy to show us the photo radar picture).  They asked for Paul’s drivers license and the registration for the vehicle and let us know we would not get it back until we pay the equivalent of $100 usd for a fine.  The fine had to be paid now and in cash.  Technically, we had the money but it was in storage, the only amount of money we had easy access to was $20 usd.  Paul spoke to them for a long time, asking if they could go to the police station to pay the fine, while Paul explained that he only had $20 or card.  After 20 minutes or so, the Police said, “this time they would accept $20 to forget about us”.  We had officially bribed the police, something we thought we would never do.

Comoyagua was a beautiful colonial town with many Hondurans from other cities exploring the historical downtown.  It was like many other colonial towns we had visited but with one big difference, there were no international tourists and once again people were excited to talk with us and they seemed genuinely surprised to see Canadians driving in Honduras.

After a delicious lunch/dinner it was time to find some where to camp.  It became evident that we would not be able to rely on our trusted iOverlander app in Honduras, everything was so out of date with barely any information (some of the recent posts were from 2017-2019), but we were able to find an Eco Park that allowed camping.  This eco park blew our mind, it was full of families celebrating birthdays and a wedding.  It had a petting zoo, swimming pools, bouncy castles and a lake where you could rent rowboats.  This was not the Honduras we had built up in our mind. 

Everything was perfect as we enjoyed a cool evening camping beside the lake, it would have continued to be perfect until we heard gunshots in the distance and were reminded that we needed to keep our safety in the top of our mind. Please note, we have heard gunshots or sounds like gunshots more often on this trip than ever in our lives, but we have never felt threatened or been in danger.  We don’t know what these shots were fired for and can come up with many different possible reasons, but we were in a locked park in a secure area with a security guard nearby in case anything happened, but nothing else happened.

 

April 17^th – Hanging out with the Honduran Army

We woke up and headed towards the Valle de Angeles area on the west side of Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras).  The capital is not a city that the government of Canada recommends visiting and that warning is supported by Lonely Planet describing some neighbourhoods as “being controlled by gangs”.  This definitely had us on edge during our drive.

The area we had to drive through seemed rough, we made sure to lock our doors and drive the speed limit.  This is where we learned something interesting about Honduran driving habits, they are super aggressive drivers.  There was a lot of people cutting other people off and hand gestures.  We were worried that they were mad at us, but it seemed that many people were just mad at all other drivers.  The worst was when we stopped to get some water (in a safer area of the city).  The traffic was crazy with us weaving in and out of oncoming traffic to pass a garbage truck and a broken down vehicle. After finding a water seller and explaining to the water people that we don’t have an empty bottle to exchange they let us buy a bottle and fill our container and return the bottle with them actively watching. Next we needed new windshield washer fluid and some groceries and then we were ready to hit the road. We were so happy to leave the city and make our way to the first stop Santa Lucia.

Santa Lucia is a beautiful old mining town, there were even some American’s there visiting family friends.  We were both kind of shocked to see each other.  We wandered the streets that were full of flowers with various views of the valley, unfortunately pollution really prevented the views from being as spectacular as they should have been. 

We stopped for lunch by a little lake in the town decorated but lanterns, we assumed it would be just lovely at night, but knew that this was not a country to explore at night time.

Our next stop was the actual community of Valle de Angeles, which although looked cute we didn’t properly explore as it was getting later and we didn’t exactly know where we would be camping.  Although we did a lot of research, a lot of time had passed since the information for where people had successfully spent the night had been updated.  We thought it would be better to be safe than sorry and make sure we had a safe place to camp.  We had read the we could camp at a national park east of the valley but that the road was extremely steep and narrow and that a sprinter in 2019 was unable to reach it.  Well, the Dodge Grand Caravan was able to go where the sprinter wasn’t and we made it to the national park much to the surprise of the Honduran army.

The visitor center for the national park doubled as a military barracks for the Honduran army.  We confirmed we could camp there and they called the park warden who after 15 minutes appeared on his motorcycle to charge us the very minimal fee for entrance to the national park and for camping.  He even gave us a map of the hikes we could do.

We spent the evening hanging around with the Honduran army, who were all men in their early 20s.  Once it was dark they all jumped on their phones and we spent the evening watching listening to them shoot each other on Call of Duty laughing when they were finally able to kill their friends.

 

April 18^th – A perfect day in Honduras

We woke up and hit the mountain trails.  La Tigra National Park was a mountain jungle full of mining history and waterfalls.  There are two entrances to this park, and we were at the El Rosario entrance, a less visited area.  The other side has access to a few more trails and a canopy walk but was an hours drive away so we stuck with the quieter side. 

The jungle was the most diversified authentic jungle we had even seen, it felt like a stereotypical jungle you would see in the movies and Paul even saw an agouti.  The hike we choose to do was 8 kilometers and showcased old gold, silver, zinc and tin mines from the first half of the 1900s, all abandoned now.  

It was cool to hike past all the old infrastructure left behind.  The hike ended in a waterfall which wasn’t that dramatic because we are in the dry season, but the hike was amazing so we didn’t feel too sad the ending was anticlimactic. We also saw a cute and fluffy street dog on our way back to the van that was so cute it distracted Kendra. Unfortunately this distraction meant Kendra was not looking where she was walking and ended up stepping ON a snake! Measuring close to 1.5 feet it was the largest snake she has ever stepped on and hopefully she will never experience that again!

We left the park and descended to the mining town of San Juancito.  We definitely got a lot of looks from the locals wondering who we were but they always smiled once we smiled at them.  The town was cute, if not small, so it didn’t take us that long to explore.  However, this is where Paul would take his favourite picture of the trip thus far. 

We returned to Valle de Angles and did it properly.  We explored the streets, bought a Christmas ornament and had some delicious coffee at a local café.  We were very happy that we returned and did the place properly.

We were feeling pretty good about our time in Honduras and decided to celebrate by returning to Tegucigalpa and checkout their local craft beer scene.  The bar we would go to was in the “safe” part of the city so we battled the traffic once again to taste some craft beer.  It was wild how different the areas of Tegucigalpa were.  The area we were in felt like a totally different city from what we had experienced our first day, it was clean, modern and cosmopolitan with many young professionals in suits driving nice cars.  If we had been dropped into this area we would have never guess we were in Central America, let alone Honduras.

Paul had read on google that we could camp at some natural water pool near the Nicaraguan border so we left Tegucigalpa and headed south east where we finally experience the bad roads people had told us about.  The main highway was at least being actively improved but once we left the main highway to a secondary highway it was well used and rutted dirt road, but the drive was worth it. 

We got to the campground and unsurprisingly we were the only ones camping at it meaning we had a private pool and a little waterfall to ourselves, which was the perfect place to enjoy the evening and our final night in Honduras.

We spent the night mesmerized about how much we enjoyed our short yet memorable time in Honduras.  We had not seen any other overlanders, we hardly saw any out of country plates, at most one or two El Salvadorian plated vehicles in the capital.  Our biggest complaint about Honduras was the Spanish.  Our experience with Honduran Spanish was unique.  They speak fast and mumble making a sentence almost sound like one really long word.  Paul hardly understood anything.  The more rural we were the harder it was to understand.  It almost became a running joke listening to people and assuming what they had asked and answering back something, most of the time we guessed we had assumed incorrectly.

We are definitely glad we, if even for a few short moments, explored Honduras and promised ourselves we would return to do its Caribbean coast.

 

April 19^th – To “the most difficult border in Central America”

We had nightmares about crossing into Nicaragua (however it seemed Rupert woke up excited).  Many Pan American overlander alumi call it the worst border they did on their journey so our anxiety was high.  We left our private pool and headed down the dirt road highway until we got to that main highway which although dilapidated was a great to return to, and in fairness it did improve as we drove closer to Nicaragua. 

We knew we were close to the border when we saw trucks parked on the side of the road lining up for kilometers.  This did nothing for our anxiety as we didn’t know why there were so many vehicles so far backed up.  We still don’t know why, as when we got to the border there was relatively no one going through the process of leaving or entering Honduras.  Within 15 minutes we had stamped out of Honduras and returned our temporary import permit for the vehicle. 

Part of the reason for our adventure in Honduras was to avoid the two border day, leaving El Salvador and driving right to Nicaragua.  We had also heard horror stories of the south western border between Honduras and Nicaragua with people breaking down in tears or waiting around for 5 + hours to to bureaucratic nonsense.  We can say that we are very happy we choose the Las Manos border.  The border was not busy and felt like a scavenger hunt where we went from building to building (shipping container to shipping container that housed different ministry offices) asking where to go and once finding the correct building and completing a task asking where to go next.  We heard that the other borders no one will help you, but at this border the Nicaraguan officials were happy to point you in the right direction, with one even leaving her post to make sure we found the spot to do Rupert’s paperwork.  It was definitely not our easiest border but it only took us 2.5 hours to get through.

Unlike El Salvador and Honduras we had to have a typical first day in Nicaragua, our data had run out on our phone plan so we went to the first real community south of the border, Ocotal for groceries, a new sim card and cash.  We had read there was a campsite in Ocotal, we even wrote the address on all our official documents for Nicaragua, but it turns out that it was just a restaurant.

When we got to the restaurant it was all locked up and we feared we had to find a new place to sleep but after reading a review of the “campground” we thought to honk our horn.  After a couple honks a friendly woman came out and unlocked the gate.  She welcomed us with open arms and allowed us to stay for free.  We refused to not pay so ate at the restaurant, even though it was closed to the public, but open for us.

Paul spent the rest of the night drinking (too much) Nicaraguan liquor he had found in the grocery store as he tried to get some work he had done for a client to upload into dropbox while Kendra got caught up on social media. We did socialize a bit with each other, but mostly just when a puppy came into the retstaurant.  We are still feeling sad to have left Honduras today, but we are excited to see what Nicaragua has to offer!