At the 6th of May we crossed the border from Guatemala into Honduras.
We spend the first night camping and cooling down at Rio Cuyamel. The water was cool which was a welcome change from the warm waters of lake Izabel. The next day we drove to the beach on the other side of Cuyamel, playa Buena vista. We asked some locals who told us it was a safe area, “no pasa nada”. We spend two nights here, relaxing at the beach and bathing in the ocean, which was to wild to swim in. We also did some shopping and got internet in Cuyamel.
After that we wanted to visit the Campamento in the Parque Nacional Cusuco. Our navigation showed us the shortest route. It seemed like a reasonable route. In reality it was an off road track to a the national park. It took us two days to drive this off road track of about 30kms and it had some challenging parts, but the area was beautiful. We spend the night at a farm, after being invited by the owner.
We had planned on camping in Cusuco NP as there was supposedly a camp ground. When we got there the barrier was down and the ticket office was abandoned. So we parked the van next to the ticket office and hiked into the park. The park was nice with a waterfall. But unfortunately we didn’t see any of the animals that are supposed to live there.
The same afternoon we drove in to the second largest city in Honduras; San Pedro Sula. This is a crowded, rather dirty and poor city with zero points of interest. Yet we stayed here for 5 days. There is a company called Angeli gardens and brewery. It is owned by an American man. It is a plant nursery as well and has a bar and a very good and beautiful restaurant. It is a big green area where overlanders can stay in the big and green parking lot for free as the owner used to travel himself and likes it if overlanders stay there. It was quiet and relaxed. We enjoyed the good food at the restaurant. It was great to be able to leave the van, walk 200, maybe 300 meters to the restaurant and just sit down and wait for the food to arrive! Kilian enjoyed the nice beers and I just loved the lemonade, the best ever! Binkie enjoyed the green area as well and we took him for several walks across the grounds.
But all good things come to an end and mid May we took off to see the Pulhapanzak waterfalls.
We were slowly heading to the border with Nicaragua and came close to Tegucigalpa, Honduras capital. But this city also offers nothing for tourists, except for some good supermarkets, so we managed to stock up on some goods that are hard to get in Honduras, like real orange juice. We found two great wild camp spots near Tegucigalpa, both at a river. We really enjoyed the fact that we were able to wild camp like we used to do all the time in Europe/Asia. It feels relaxed and free. But contrary to Europe/Asia, we now first check with some locals to see it the area is safe.
We spend a few days in and around Danli to prepare for the border crossing with Nicaragua. Near Laguna San Julian we had to deal with a bug problem. Then at the 23rd of May we crossed into Nicaragua, you can read about this challenging border crossing.
Our first planned stop in Nicaragua was canyon Somoto. Unfortunately due to high water, we couldn’t visit this canyon, but we did find another great place to wild camp. In May the rainy season starts. This wasn’t really noticeable in the first half of May but now there were daily showers. This means less sun which is bad for our household battery and more insects which is bad for us. The air is also more humid and the temperature is still around 30°C. It didn’t take long for us to realize we prefer the dry season (December – May). This is generally considered the best time to travel. But when you are travelling all the time it is of course impossible to avoid the “bad” season. We have also been warned about the roads, that they will quickly deteriorate during the rainy season. But so far this hasn’t been a problem yet.
Our next stop was the volcano Telica which was awesome!
At the end of May we spend a couple of days relaxing at a campsite in Las Penitas near Leon, planning to visit Leon early June. The campsite was nice but it was so bloody hot! It was close by the sea but the cooling breeze from the sea didn’t reach the campsite. At night the temperature in the van didn’t go below 29°C. Fortunately they had good showers so we could cool down a bit and wash away the sweat. We also had some nice meals at a restaurant at the beach. Every night it rained heavily, causing a small flood on the campsite and a loss of electricity at our last day there.
