A visit to El Cajon in Honduras

A few weeks ago I visited a place in Honduras near Lake Yojoa. This place is unique and very interesting. The name of this place is El Cajon. What about it? What's in that place that is worth visiting?. Well, let me tell you that I was planning to take a week for vacations, and I figured that visiting the north area of Honduras would be a good choice.

My idea was to go somewhere that could be a good location in order to take advantage of the few days available, so I could go to different places in the same week, but I needed like a base for establish myself, and go to the different places in different days, and go back to my base the same day, so I could do something similar the next day and so on for the rest of the week.

Someone I know suggested to go this place, El Cajon, that would be a good place to establish myself as I was planning, the location is good, it is pretty near to some very interesting other places where I could go and return the same day. Now, everything I knew about El Cajon so far was that I have heard about it, this place is known because there is a water dam in the area. In fact, the name of this water dam is El Cajon. But I said, what about a water dam?. It may be an interesting place to visit, but for one day and that´s all. I thought I could go there, visit the water dam, but I had no idea what else I could do there.

To give you an idea where it is located, as I said before, this place is in the Lake Yojoa area. You have to drive about 20 minutes north of Lake Yojoa in the main road to San Pedro Sula, and you will get to a detour right to a well known town with the name of Santa Cruz de Yojoa. You drive about 25-30 minutes in a paved road, into the mountains, and you will get to El Cajon.


Well, it turns out that El Cajon is a water dam, but you know what, it is one of the highest water dams in the World. Yes, it is listed in the top 20 highest water dams of the whole world. The concrete water dam structure in El Cajon is about 230 meters high, it looks huge!. Another interesting thing about this water dam is that because of its magnitude, it is a huge electricity generator. In order to keep this water dam and all its associated facilities running, a lot of people has to work there.

The electricty company has two base camps where the employees that work in El Cajon need to live. The camps are pretty nice, they have in there all they need to live, they are like little towns.

Going back to my initial plan, the idea was to be based in one of these camps, I had a complete house available with living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, a complete house. Now, the catch here is the following …… how can anybody go to one of these camps and get a house available?. Unfortunately I have to tell you that these camps are not open to the public, they are only available for people who work there, or their families.

Well, I think I was pretty lucky on this one…….it turns out that my sister in law works in the electricity company, and she could get me a house because we are relatives, we are family. With this place available for me, I could go on with my initial plan. I figured it would be a good idea to go there, establish myself in one of those camps, and go to different places the rest of the week, go and return the same day so I could spend the night in the camp.

And I did just that, I went there and had a very interesting week. The same week I went to San Pedro Sula, next day I went to Tela, next day I went to the mayan ruins in Copan, next day I went to Lake Yojoa and Pulapanzak. I also spent a couple of days inside the camps in El Cajon, it is very cool, they have pools, parks, places to visit inside the camps, you can admire nature, mountains, fresh air. I also went to visit the water dam of course, it is incredible.

Ordinary people can also visit El Cajon, the water dam. It is a one day visit, you can go there anytime and take a look at this interesting place. Unfortunately you can not stay in the camps unless you work in the electricty company, or some member of your family works there. Lucky me on this one!

In other posts I will tell you about the other places I visited that week (Tela, San Pedro Sula, Copan Ruins)……….

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