Honduras - June 17th

This was one of my favorite days in Honduras. When we tried to do the canopy tour the night before, we saw information regarding an all day tour with horseback riding, coffee plantation tour and hot springs. It sounded interesting so we decided to do it.

We met our personal tour guide, Alex at about 9am. We all got into a pick up truck and headed to this dirt road out of Copan. It had rained all night again, so the rivers were running pretty good. There was also a mudslide on the street that we needed to take to get to where we were going, so Alex said that we would stay in this truck for a while and then walk across the mudslide to another truck that would be waiting for us.

There were houses all along the road on the way there.

These are some school kids that were playing in the water. School uniforms in Honduras are white shirts with navy pants. The kids either go to school in the morning or in the afternoon.

Here is the mudslide. We were able to walk across it, but no car could drive over it.

They were trying to figure out how to repair the mudslide.

Once we crossed the mudslide area, we walked a bit and then waited for the truck to come pick us up. After waiting for quite a while, it never came, so Alex flagged down another pick up truck and asked if we could hitch a ride in the back. We all hopped in and rode the remaining distance (about another hour). A lot of people jumped in and jumped out along the way.

More houses - this lady was hanging out her laundry after washing it on the pila (which is the concrete square under that awning).

Our first stop was horseback riding. Mom got the most tame horse, but throughout the day, her horse probably galloped the most. Kyle would get his horse to gallop, and Mom's horse wanted to stay with Kyle, so off she would go.

We made a short stop while horseback riding to give the horses a break.

This was my horse - it was named Mr. Grey (I forget what they called it in Spanish).

After horseback riding, we came back to the ranch and they cooked us a traditional Honduran meal. We also had some time to sit in the hammock.

This is Bronco - he was one of the few dogs in Honduras that was taken care of and not just on the streets.

This is a coffee plant. The coffee plantation that we were on is certified to sell to Starbucks.

This is where they put the coffee beans. These channels are filled with water, and the beans will either sink or float. If the beans sink, that means that they are first-class beans (more dense). If the beans float, then they are considered second class.

This is a coffee dryer. The beans take 40 hours to dry in here.

Some kids playing soccer. Everyone plays soccer there.

This is a cashew fruit (notice the cashew on the top of the fruit).

This is a cacao plant. You could easily make lots of fresh raw vegan food in Honduras.

Crossing the bridge to the hot springs.

There were a bunch of hot pools, a steam area, and our favorite, a mud bath. Great exfoliation!

After the mud bath, it was time to head back to Copan. This is the mudslide from earlier in the day - it had fully caved so we had to climb through it to get to the other side. We felt bad for the Honduran people, because there is no government funding to fix this. Kyle talked to them, and he said that they were going to start saving money to rent some large construction equipment to fix this. That could take them a while though.

Dinner after our long day was at Twisted Tanya's again. I love that place.