Honduras

Our project is taking us all around the world from the comfort of our very own kitchen table. In reality, the five of us have only been to three countries outside of the U.S. of A. Those would be Canada (some of us have been more places than others), Mexico (a couple of stops) and Honduras (one glorious afternoon). 

Mexico and Honduras were both stops along our Mexican cruise.  We splurged on our day in Honduras and did the 'private island excursion' which included a nice lunch,  snorkeling (and your gear), feeding monkeys, lounging on the beach and by the pool, visiting with various seals, sealions, and talking birds- and some replica Mayan ruins to investigate. Click that link if you've never heard about our trip before. It's one of our favorite days ever. 

But, basically the island was a snapshot of Honduras, and a lot of those things came up in our book. 

Let's start with the Mayan ruins. 

Our landmark belongs to Copan, an archaeological site of the Mayan civilization that wasn't excavated until the 19th century.  In it's heyday (like the 5th century), Copan was one of the most important of the Mayan cities, probably a capital, and was home to more than 20,000 people. 

Nobody knows why it was abandoned a few centuries later, but today the remaining carved stone faces, stairways, sculptures of jaguars, and more than 2,200 Mayan petroglyphs are considered some of the finest surviving art of Mesoamerica. 

Honduras is another country who can chalk its name up to Columbus. Supposedly when he landed here, after a bad storm, he exclaimed (in Spanish, obviously) "Thank God we've left these depths" Honduras means 'depths' in English. 

Honduras can also claim it was the original 'Banana Republic', coined by American writer O Henry. He used it to describe the influence American companies wielded over the Honduran government in the 1890s. 

Outside of Honduras, the country isn't really known for anything in particular, which is kind of a shame. It's a country full of spectacular ruins, colonial cities, lush rain forests, and reef circled islands. Trademarks include the Mosquito Coast (basically the whole side of Honduras along the Caribbean), jaguars, howler monkeys, scarlet macaw parrots (the national bird!) cloud forests, and cheap diving (I can attest!- the island might have been expensive but the awesome diving you got as a result was a huge perk!) 

But Honduras is also known for record-breaking murder rates. San Pedro Sula not too many years ago was declared the murder capital of the world. They've slipped to number three on the list recently (behind Caracas, Venezuela and Acapulco, Mexico), but Honduras holds the number three and number four spots on the list. (The third being San Pedro Sula, the fourth being the capital city, Tegucigalpa--- which you guys, I spelled right on the FIRST TRY!) 

Anyway, it's pretty obvious why there would be a US Travel Warning. In fact it's at a newly coined 'Level 3: Reconsider Travel'.  But honestly, if you stick to the outlier islands (such as Roatan, where we went) , you'll be fine. Most people visit the national parks (like the dwarf forest of Cusuco National Park where no trees grow over 10 feet) and the islands for the great diving (and the whale sharks) anyway! You could also hop on the Patuca River for the famous 'Gates of Hell' white water rafting. The cities are really the places where you'll find the violence and the crime. 

Since we've had a meal in Honduras before, we decided to go with a quick lunch here. We had Jicama for our fruit, and some desserts that we had gathered along the way. 

Then we made Flautas with shredded chicken, and toppings to choose from. 

This one earned four spoons up. 

Hayden also gave it a spoons up, but he mostly ditched his flauta and used leftover ground beef and made himself a taco, so it doesn't REALLY count. 

But, the rest of us enjoyed this not too unique lunch, but still rather yummy lunch for our last central american country. 

The Jicama sticks were fine, none of us were clambering to have more or anything. It was basically like an apple with less flavor, but those gansito's were pretty awesome. It was like a lighter chocolate twinkie. 

Postcards are a little out of order here, since we did them after we had lunch (it's hard to get those kids to do anything productive before noon!) 

Calib's featured Mayan ruins and the dwarf Forrest. 

Peyton's featured the Lluvia de Peces (of the Rain of Fish), apparently one a year or so, fish rain from the sky in the town of Yoro. I don't know, it seems a little 'fishy' to me (ha!), but National Geographic once witnessed the phenomenon and kind of said it was legit.  It was the 70's though. 

Hayden did a two sided postcard with a talking macaw on one side, and Mayan ruins on the other. 

Honduras was colored in a dark blue color just to the north of light green Nicaragua, to the west of pink El Salvador, and to the south of light blue Guatemala and yellow Belize. 

With that, Central America is all filled in. 

That's 171 down, just 25 to go! 

Next Up: Liechtenstein