Hiking through the Jungles of La Tigra

¡Buenos Días!

Well as most of you have probably found, I posted a bunch of pictures on facebook of my latest adventures here. On Friday we had the awesome opportunity to drive to El Campo (the countryside). Let me tell ya its not like the countryside at home. This countryside is in the mountains along steep bumpy dirt roads. The houses were for the most part brightly colored and in better shape than I had expected them to be. There were horses everywhere and most were not fenced in or tied up! We even passed one horse who had just given birth to a foal! It was adorable. The views were amazing and I tried to capture those in the pictures, but those do little justice to what we saw. Our destination was this little organic farm in the valley of the mountain. I believe it is the only organic farm in all of Honduras. The people were very friendly and gave us the grand tour of the place. I tried some of the carrots they grew there and they were quite tasty! They also had squash, lettuce, celery, chives, broccoli, corn, and many other types. It was great walking through fields and looking up to see the mountains around us with blue skies and fluffy white clouds passing by. It just did not feel real. We then had lunch, which we brought with us consisting of sandwiches and chips. Some of the stray dogs came running when they smelled the food. We all felt so bad for them cause their ribs were basically sticking all the way out. So we fed em a little bit of our food haha. And its so hard not to pet them! Then we piled back on the bus and off we went back down the mountain.

Then this weekend we had a nice long adventurous trip to La Tigra, which is a national park in the mountains! I thought the views in El Campo were amazing, the ones at La Tigra were even more incredible. We drove for about an hour up the mountain and then the bus pulled over in a little town. We had to hike up the mountain for the rest of the way (about 2 miles up) We put our stuff for the night in a truck that took it to the house we were staying in. Of course all the girls had to use the bathroom first, and me Julienne and Betsy were last. We got out of the bathroom and found that the whole group had left without us! We were like hmmm alright who do we ask "where did all the gringos go?" ( we are called gringos here in case your not familiar with the term) well a nice lady pointed us in the right direction and off we went. We found out quickly that the path was quite steep and the air was thin which made for lots of heavy breathing and breaks. Betsy showed us this sweet plant that when you touch it, it will curl up. So every time we saw a patch of it we would stop and make it all curl up. I have a video of it on facebook too if you want to see what I'm talking about. Except one of the times when we were taking a video of it, I was standing in a huge ant hill and didn't know it till all of sudden my foot started stinging and I look down to see it covered in little ants. I jumped around and threw my shoe off and managed to only get 3 or 4 bites. Luckily they didnt' get infected or anything :) But we continued on our trek up and ended up guessing which way we were suppose to go and asked locals on the way. We saw a wild toucan flying in the trees and Betsy saw a scarlet macaw, it was sooo neat! We passed many horses, dogs, chickens, and a goose. It was amazing, the nature was so bright and brilliant, I had never seen anything so amazing in my life. It made the incredibly difficult climb much easier. After 1 1/2 hours of climbing we reached our house (kind of like a hotel). We had a home cooked delicious lunch of beans, rice, tortillas, beef, and veggies, and then left for our next hike in the jungles of La Tigra. We were in the jungles for three hours and came across so many waterfalls including the huge one we have all the pictures of! It was incredible, it was so green and wet and filled with mosquitoes and every other kind of bug. We walked on tiny trails on the edge of incredibly high drop-offs. It was exhilarating. There were huge trees, vines, and undergrowth everywhere. It was just breath taking. The large waterfall was so much fun, we climbed all around it and cooled off our feet in the freezing water. Then we headed back to the house where we had dinner mmm mmm, and then had a share time with the group so we could get to know each other a lot better. Then we had a camp fire in the pouring rain and roasted marshmellows and ate smore's! It was amazing and delicious, chocolate finally after over a week of being here. (Sidenote: the people here do not each sweet things very often at all, rarely are there desserts, and chocolate is expensive so its hard to come by) It was a great time to get to know our group better and learn some new card games! The next day (Sunday) we had some free time to relax and then we took a short walk over to a gorgeous yellow house that overlooked the entire city of Tegucigalpa and the mountains. It was amazing, definitely my dream house. This was the house of Jorge and his wife who were originally from Germany, but fell in love with Honduras during a visit and just couldn't leave. But his wife is a vet and makes jam. Which was awesome, so I bought some home made jam from them, we had a sample of it and it was so so good. Then we walked back to the house and had lunch and then walked down the mountain to the bus and went home to sleep the rest of the night. It was such a great weekend to relax, see new things, and get to know everybody.