Tela, a beautiful beach in the Honduran Caribbean

This time I would like to tell you about another paradisiac beach in the Caribbean part of Central America. This interesting destination is Tela, in Honduras. As I have explained in previous posts, the Caribbean in Central America has a lot of tourist destinations, and some of the best beaches are located in the Honduran Caribbean. If you take a look in a map of Central America, you will notice that the Caribbean has a lot of territory, I mean, there is a large amount of beaches, all the way from Belize down to Panama. There is a lot of territory in the south with the Pacific Ocean as well.

From my personal point of view, the best beach destinations in Central America are definitely located in the north, into the Caribbean. Many of them are paradisiac places. This time I will tell you about this beautiful place, the name is Tela as I said before. There is a very good advantage about this place, it is very easy to get there. If you take a look at the Honduras map, you will see that Tela is located very near to San Pedro Sula. Do you know how many hours would you have to drive from San Pedro Sula?. It´s only one hour, or if you´re driving not very fast, it would be 1 hour and 20 minutes at the most. The road is in pretty good condition, it is paved road, most of the trip is through plain terrain, only a few mountains in the way.

You can go very easily to Tela from San Pedro Sula as you can see, you can even go for a one day trip, you go in the morning and come back in the afternoon with no problems at all. Now, I suggest you could go for more than one day, so you can take advantage of the trip and you could have more time to explore different beaches. Tela is a beautiful town, and has a lot of beaches. It is located into a Bay, the name is Bay of Tela, which is several miles long. The best beaches are not in front of the town, for getting to the best beaches you have to drive either to the east, or to the west of the town, not very far away. If you drive about 20 minutes in either way, you will find some of the best beaches in the Caribbean part of Honduras.

I especially like some very beautiful beaches going East. One of those beaches is La Ensenada, it is a very well known beach in the area. Another famous beach nearby is Triunfo de la Cruz. Both of them are really beautiful beaches, a lot of white sand, a lot of coconut palm trees. In this area there are Garifuna communities. Garifuna people are descendants from the African people that came to live here many centuries ago, they have been living here for many years. They have very interesting traditions, their music and dancing is incredible. Their food is really good. You can have a taste of their food right there in the beach, they have places like little tents made with palm trees where you can sit and enjoy their food.

Now, about the beach itself, Tela is known as one of the best destinations in Honduras if you want to enjoy taking a swim into the Sea. The place is great for getting in there and enjoy the water, enjoy the waves that come from the Ocean. Some other beaches in the Caribbean are really calm, it´s like going into a pool, no waves, but in Tela you will find ocean waves, it´s not like you´re going to surf or anything like that, they are smooth waves, really nice and cool.

A really good thing to do if you go to Tela is taking a quick trip with some Garifuna people in a boat, they can take you in a boat with an engine and drive you into the ocean all along the Bay of Tela if you want. That´s a real adventure.

If you go to Tela and intend to stay a few days, there are several Hotels and resorts, very good by the way. There is project coming in the next few years that will become very famous, the project is known as Bay of Tela. A lot of Hotels and resorts are going to be built, golf courses and all ammenities for a first class beach destination.

Every time I have the chance I go to Tela, I take the opportunity and go. When I think about taking a swim into the Sea, I inmediately think of Tela.

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Visiting Valle de Angeles in a week day

Last week I made a quick trip to Valle de Angeles, you know, the famous colonial town near Tegucigalpa, about 30 minutes drive. I have written previous posts about Valle de Angeles, a place which is famous for being a tourist destination, colonial spanish town in the Tegucigalpa area, in Honduras.

I don´t know how many times I have gone there, I´ve lost the account. Now, the interesting thing with this particular visit is that I did the trip in a week day, I believe it was a Wednesday morning. Most of the times I have gone there, it´s been on a weekend, either Saturday or Sunday. Most people who visit Valle de Angeles do it on weekends, the amount of people that goes there in a weekend day is a lot. Since the moment you begin your trip going out of Tegucigalpa and taking the road to Valle de Angeles, you notice a lot of cars and people going with you in a weekend. And when you get there, to Valle de Angeles, there is a lot of people walking in the streets, most of them are tourists. But you know, it is really a lot of people in a normal weekend day, which is fine, no problem.

Now, going back to my initial topic, this time I did the trip on a week day. It´s not the first time I go there in a week day, but it has been only a few times that I've done that. And you know what, I think you enjoy the trip a lot more on a normal week day compared with a weekend day. And you know why?. It´s simple, because you can enjoy more with much less people around the town at the same time. You will always find a lot of tourists and people visiting Valle de Angeles any day, in fact this time there were a lot of people also, but nothing compared with the crowd that goes there on weekends.

You can feel much more relaxed with less people around you, you can take a walk in the town, very cool, very easy. You can have much more places available to park your car almost anywhere.

I also took this opportunity to visit a very interesting place there. As you probably know, Valle de Angeles is the main base of the artisans who work and make incredible handicrafts. The artisans have some type of exposition for their work. In Valle de Angeles there are several pavillions for showing the handicrafts. These pavillions are some type of large showrooms where you can go in there and take a walk to admire all kinds of handicrafts. I had been there many times before also, but this time for some reason I had more chance to take a better look at these pieces of art work because there weren´t many people visiting in a week day. It´s incredible how beautiful these handicrafts can be.

Many of them are carved wood, some other are pottery, hammocks, paintings, you name it!. These artisans really know their work. I believe these handicrafts are really unique, they are pieces of real art. The variety is very wide, going from the range of little things that you could place in a desk in your office or home, but also you can find very large items. For example, I saw a carved wood door, 2 meters high, 1 meter wide. It´s a door you could install in your home. I will get a door like this someday very soon to put it in my home. It´s incredibly beautiful. There are also carved wood boxes, they have rural landscapes carved in the surface. From little boxes to large boxes. They would make an excellent ornament in any home or any office. Real impresive work.

The artisans have an association, it´s called Asociacion Nacional de Artesanos de Honduras (ANAH), which is National Association of Honduran Artisans. These people are really incredible with their work.

After visiting the artisans pavillions, I took a long walk downtown Valle de Angeles, looking at the beauty of the town. This place is really great, you feel very relaxed, it´s like traveling back in time, you forget about the city at least for a couple of hours. Someday I would like to live in a town like this….

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A quick visit to Copan Ruins

This time I would like to tell you about a quick visit I made recently to the Mayan Ruins in Copan, Honduras. This is not the first post I write about this mystic and extraordinary place, and I´m sure it won´t be the last post either. I have been there many times before, and I will be there many times again in the future. It is always a very good place to visit. You can never see enough of Copan Ruins, not in one visit and I think not in all the visits you could possibly do.

I was taking vacations for one week early this year, and I was thinking about what places I could visit. Most times when you are planning vacations, you are thinking about visiting new places……. Where I have not been before?. Where could I go this time?. That's fine, I guess most people think this way. However, this time I was thinking to myself, it's been at least 3 years that I have not visited Copan Ruins, it's always a very interesting place to visit, and decided to go there, at least for a day in order to take a look and refresh my memories of that place.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was based in El Cajon with the idea to visit several places that week, and one of those places was Copan Ruins. So I made up my mind and went there for a one day visit, leaving El Cajon early in the morning, visit the ruins the rest of the day and return to El Cajon late in the afternoon.

In order to take advantage of a one day visit, I had to leave early in the morning. Driving from El Cajon to Copan is about 3.5 hours. You have to go from El Cajon to San Pedro Sula, and take the main road from San Pedro Sula to Copan. So I left El Cajon at 6:00 am and I got to Copan Ruins at 9:30. That was a good time to get there, I could stay in the Ruins at least the rest of the day. The weather was not very hot, it was cool, excelent for this visit.

Once you are in Copan Ruins, it's an adventure, it is like traveling through time many centuries ago. In this post I'm not going to talk in detail about the Copan Ruins history, but every time I visit this place I get an incredible feeling………Wow!. The monuments, the ruins, the carved stone, it's amazing. I don´t know how much you are familiar about mayan ruins, but you know, Copan is the most artistic Mayan place ever known. Any person who knows about Mayans can tell you this. The buildings, the hieroglyphic writings carved in the stones. Copan Ruins was the most artistic mayan place that ever existed, and you can see that in the ancient ruins, it's still there.

There are many other mayan cities all over Central America and even in Mexico, some of those cities are larger than Copan, or have much larger buildings, higher or whatever other feature. But looking at ruins from an artistic point of view, Copan is the one site to visit if you had to choose one Mayan place to go someday. Well, that´s may point of view anyway……..

That day I visited every corner into the Copan Ruins, climbed every stairway, every monument, I even visited a couple of caves that go into the buildings, very interesting. Later that day I felt pretty tired, you know, it's a lot of walking, but it is worth it.

In the afternoon I went to the town nearby to have lunch and a cup of coffee, ………..do you know what is the name of the town nearby? ………..wanna guess?. It's easy. The name of the town is………Copan Ruins, it´s only about 4 miles east of the Mayan Ruins. Very beautiful town, colonial buildings, good places to have a good food, it´s very nice to walk in the streets. A lot of tourists there, people from all over the world. If you visit the Mayan Ruins in Copan, you have to visit the town as well.

Later that afternoon I left Copan with the feeling that it was a worth visit. I felt pretty tired but with a great feeling.

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