Honduras

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Traveling to Honduras was almost like stepping back in time. I was shocked at the level of poverty that I witnessed here. I found the people to be very friendly and the landscape to be quite unspoiled, but Honduras has a long way to go before it can make its way out of the 3rd World. I hope it does so without commercializing itself to death, like in so many other Caribbean countries. I would live to return to Honduras in the future.

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There is evidence of Maya settlement since at least 1000 BC at Copán in western Honduras, but like other Maya city-states this was abandoned mysteriously around AD900. Columbus set foot on the American mainland for the first time at Trujillo in northern Honduras in 1502 and named the country after the deep water off the Caribbean coast ('Honduras' means depths). The Spanish settled in Trujillo in 1525, but soon became interested in colonizing the cooler highlands. Part of Spain's vast empire in the New World, Honduras became an independent nation in 1821. After two and one-half decades of mostly military rule, a freely elected civilian government came to power in 1982.

A Macaw in Tabyana Beach in Roatan


Overlooking the Caribbean 2004


A Poor Family in Roatan


At a Tourist Beach 2004