After having traveled solo for more than 2 months, I was happy to have travel companion for the next 2 weeks: Vera, my friend who had also been with me on my first long-term trip in South America. So 5 years after that, we were finally traveling together again and we were really excited. Our destination this time was Honduras, a country I was really looking forward to, because I knew nearly nothing about it. Vera flew into Guatemala City in the evening and we met in a Hostel there, but we didn’t really go out and explore the city. From what I had heard, there is not much worth seeing anyway. The next day we had booked a shuttle to Copán early in the morning and amazingly it picked us up on time. The shuttle ride took about 5 hours and we crossed the border just 10 minutes before arriving in Copán. For some weird reason they wanted to see my yellow fever vaccination certificate, because I had been in Colombia 4 years ago. Luckily, I had it with me.
Copán turned out to be a really cute town with cobblestone streets, nice colonial buildings and some nice coffeeshops (I’m really becoming a coffee addict here in Central America, the coffee tastes just sooo good). The main attraction are the Mayan ruins, which we checked out on the same day. The nice thing is that they are in a walkable distance from town, so you don’t need to book a taxi or tour. After having seen the beautiful ruins of Tikal and Palenque, Copán was a bit underwhelming. But it turned out that the ruins were actually not the main reason to come here. For us it was large flocks of scarlet macaws sitting in the trees around the ruins. We saw lots of them and they were not shy at all, so we got really close to those amazingly colorful birds.
Beautiful scarlet macaws
And some Maya ruins.
Our next destination was Utila island, so the next day we had another long shuttle ride ahead of us: from Copán all the way to La Ceiba on the coast. It took us about 8 hours, but I really enjoyed watching the landscapes pass by. Honduras seemed very green and quite wild and untouched. We also passed by San Pedro Sula, which had been rated the most violent city in the world at one point. It looked like any non-touristy big city in Central America (messy and with horrible traffic, but not particularly threatening), but we were kind of glad that we didn’t have to leave the car anyway. We arrived in the port of La Ceiba quite early and had almost 4 hours to kill before the ferry to Utila left. In a tiny restaurant on the port I had one of the best value meals that I’ve had so far: a huge portion of rice, plantains, beans, and chicken with sauce for about 2 dollars. And it even tasted good. On the ferry we had a beautiful view of the sunset and we arrived in Utila just at dusk. The main reason why people come to Utila is for the amazing scuba diving, and that’s what we were planning to do as well. We dropped our stuff at the hostel we had booked for that night and then went to find a dive center to book some dives for the next few days. We ended up at Alton’s, which offered us a nice package including a room just for us, so we moved there the next morning and went for our first dive in the afternoon. It felt great to be under water again. The underwater world looked quite similar to the one in Belize and at first it felt strange to actually just be diving without having to spear lionfish or looking for lobsters. I also kind of missed my diving buddies from Tom Owen’s. Luckily, I had Vera with me. We saw some moray eels and huge crabs and made it back to Utila just in time for another breathtakingly beautiful sunset.
Underwater selfie.
Beautiful underwater world.
We spent a few days on Utila, diving, relaxing and exploring the island. It definitely has more of a Carribean than Latin American vibe and most people speak English (even if you try to speak Spanish with them). Like us, most visitors were there mainly for diving, even though there also seemed to be some nice-looking beaches a bit further away from town.
Apart from many more amazing dives, one of the highlights was snorkeling with dolphins. The captains of the dive boats always look for dolphins and whale sharks and one morning we were lucky enough to find a group of dolphins. We all jumped into the water with our masks, fins and snorkels and managed to follow them for a bit. Then they were gone as fast as they had appeared. Another highlight was the night dive I did. I had already had some amazing night dives in Belize, but this one was even better, since there was just so much bioluminescence. We even swam with our lamps turned off for a bit. It looked like we were swimming through a million stars and it was just breathtakingly beautiful. After surfacing we got amazing views of the actual stars which were super bright.
Snorkeling with dolphins.
Dive spot with a view.
Oh, those Utila sunsets.
After a few days in Utila, we took a ferry to Roatán, the neighboring island. Roatán is bigger than Utila, also known for its amazing dive sites, but much less backpacker friendly, since there are mainly resorts on the island and only few budget accommodations. As a treat we had booked 2 nights in a resort right at the beach. After so much time of backpacking, it felt strange to have a huge bungalow and to just sit at the beach and relax the whole day. But the beach was definitely one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, with white, soft sand and crystal clear blue water. Unfortunately, we were bothered every 3 minutes by someone trying to sell us something. From banana bread to hammocks you could get pretty much anything.
View from our bungalow.
Another postcard-worthy sunset.
Even though I really enjoyed the two days of relaxing, I was happy to be back on the road after that. We took the same we back as we came, passing La Ceiba and Copán and went back to Guatemala, where we spent some more days in Antigua, before Vera had her flight back to Switzerland. I had really enjoyed my time in Honduras and I know that I’ve only seen a tiny fraction of this beautiful country (and probably not the most representative one). So I’ll just have to come back one day.