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Honduras Vacation -
Ideas and Suggestions
[Vacation Themes] [ Maps ] [
Honduras Travel Books ]
Vacation Themes
for Honduras- Planning Part 1
You have great choices when you travel
to Honduras on vacation. Narrow it down based on your interests.
To get a picture of Honduras, let's look at themes for your Honduras
vacation consideration:
• Beaches, scuba diving,
swimming and snorkeling –
Any of
the Bay Islands. West Bay on Roatan is
 a picture
of serene beaches, quiet days, and healing waters. You have to spend at least two evenings on one of the
Bay Islands if you are going to Honduras on vacation. Do it.
Utila
is the least expensive and draws the backpacking crowd.
Roatan is
more upscale.
Guanaja
is for those that just want wonderful solitude with their diving or swimming.
• Honduras 'yesterday'
- Copan Ruinas.
No one can leave Honduras while on
vacation with out visiting the ruins. Even if you
are only interested in diving, visit Copan Ruinas; the history and culture are too rich to
miss.
Fly from the Bay Islands to San Pedro Sula,
visiting the Museum of
Anthropology and History. Then, use
Hedman-Alas’s first-class bus to Copan
Ruinas, stay the night, and
take another
full day there. Spend some time in the
shops that dot the village while you are there to visit Copan Ruinas.
• Urban experience –
Tegucigalpa or San
Pedro Sula. While on vacation in Honduras, visit one city or the other -- unless you plan on flying between
them. If you arrive in and depart from San Pedro Sula, you are
closer to the Bay Islands. Leave Roatan first thing in the morning and you
can make an 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. connection back home. Voila, another night on
the islands.
• City life with zest, nothing
beats La Ceiba. Ah, Ceiba. A rich variety of people, music (you have
to try the punta - local dance), the Caribbean
sea, fresh fish, markets, good shopping, a laid-back attitude with a perpetual
smile – that’s Ceiba. Cuero Y Salado Wildlife Refuge is a tropical
forest preserve with a particular emphasis on manatee preservation. It is
a 1/2 hour drive west of Ceiba.
In
Pico
Bonito Natural Reserve, you can hike from near sea-level up to 8,000
feet in the Nombre de Dios mountain range. No place in Honduras
offers a greater variety of Honduran life than Ceiba.
• Relaxed taste of Caribbean
life, Tela is the ticket.
Tela has protected forests, national parks and botanical gardens all
within 15 minutes. The tourism department of Tela has an informative
website that will
help you plan some time in the area.
From Tela, day trips to the
Garifuna (West African, Arawak and Carib indigenous ancestry) villages of
Miami and Tornabe are superb “slow down, look, and listen” opportunities.
•
Hiking
and
birding
in Honduras
of a lifetime - virtually anywhere in Honduras. Over 30 cloud forests await you.
Tropical preserves, mangrove swamps, lonely stretches of white sand, river rapids
-- you name it, Honduras offers it.
•
Solitude and remote jungle
areas, the
Mosquitia offers unrivaled adventure
and uniqueness. Not an area for the timid.
Maps
Printing out a map will give you a
better lay of the land. The
map
from Lonely Planet will probably cover all the cities and places you will be
taking in. If you would like a map with more detail on Honduras geography,
this
map
should help.
I have collected an assortment of
Honduras maps in their own section.
Length of stay?
Make it at least two weeks or more. You are committing the airfare. Two
weeks provides you a more leisurely time and permits a refreshing of your
spirit. You work very hard. Now, relax very hard.
Travel Books
- Invaluable Assets
Unlike Mexico or Brazil, you won’t find a great variety of books out there on Honduras.
Chris Humphrey's
Moon Handbooks:
Honduras is my favorite. Spend some time with it.
Make
your trip even more enjoyable by wading through some of the suggested reading in the
excellent bibliography in the book.
Taking some time to read about
Honduras prior to the trip provides a richer context during your visit there.
Chris's book is the one book to toss into your bag on the way to the airport.
Adventures in Nature Honduras is another good book that would appeal to
those seeking the 'green'
approach to Honduras tourism, eco-tourism. It is harder to come by but can
be ordered online.
Tegucigalpa (Tegus) - Our journey didn't take us to Tegus.
In another section of our website, Eric Timar gives
the highlights of travel to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Folks going to Tegucigalpa would be
well served by getting their hands on Eric's Tegucigalpa Guide.
Buy it for the dry humor
 even
if you aren't going to Tegucigalpa. Eric writes a descriptive, readable
guide that provides an excellent context for
travel anywhere in Honduras.
NOTE: While info on Tegus on the net is limited, Honduras Tips
has the best overall
site on
Tegus. Make sure to use the nav buttons on the left (note: the
home button takes you "off of" Tegus).
Complete guidebooks
to Central America are out there, with all the countries from Guatemala to
Panama listed and described in great detail. By all means, browse through
them at your favorite book store. But I would suggest not taking one along
-- it’s too heavy to lug throughout Honduras. My wife even encouraged me
to rip out just the parts from our Honduran book that we would need for our
journey. While I think she is onto something, I couldn’t bring myself to
doing it. I am afraid of going to librarians' he11.
Next Section:
Let's think through how much we want to plan and how
much we should leave in the hands of a Honduran tour guide, all covered in
the next section.
Planning 1 | 2 │
3 │
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