Leon & crossing Honduras

Leon, a city with imposing colonial architecture and also the capital of the Sandinista revolution, has been Granada's great rival throughout history. Granada is considered to have had a conservative policy, while Leon had a liberal one. We stayed in Leon for three nights, with our caravan in a parking lot with water and toilets. We really liked the city, as did Nicaragua, which we considered a surprise that exceeded our expectations. Going from Leon to the Pacific coast, which is only twenty kilometers away, we spent our last night in this country in a cozy hotel on Las Penitas beach.

On July 7th, right after breakfast we left the picturesque Las Penitas and headed for the Honduran border, located about 80 kilometers away. It was a busy day, at the Honduran border... We arrived around 12:00 and we only crossed into Honduras at 17:00. We were not scanned suplimentary (a scanner search can lead to at least two if not three hours of additional delay) but it was a busy day, among other things a group with many people belonging to the "traveler to the land of dreams USA" type clearly slowed down the flow of travelers through customs. First impressions of Honduras are rather unpleasant. There is quite a lot of garbage and plastic deposited along the roads. This reminded me of Peru, yes Peru without tourists, in Cuzco and Machu Pichu everything is cleaned. We stayed overnight in a hotel in the city of Choluteca, 40 kilometers from the border we had just crossed.

The only major tourist attraction we wanted to visit in Honduras was the excellent Mayan site of Copan. But realizing after research that the 500+ kilometers to Copan for various reasons could not be done in less than 3 days, we decided to cross the border with El Salvador after only one night in Honduras, and possibly see Copan as an excursion from Guademala, near whose border it is located. So on July 8th we left for the border with El Salvador which we crossed in only 75 minutes. Here we met the most efficient and polite border officers so far. So, I can say that our experience in Honduras is limited to one night in a hotel and a distance of about 130 km between the Nicaraguan border and El Salvador. Maybe we will return from the north so we can visit Copan.Læs mere