Picturesque hills, volcanos and lovely small towns flew along the bus window. I fell in love with the country as soon as I saw it. Even so there’s a surfer town further south, we chose to stay in El Tunco for a while. This town is small but has its own unique vibe. I met really cool street artists there, tried to stand on a surfboard once again (waves are definitely not ideal for beginners) and got addicted to those milkshakes from the restaurant street. Since my friend got sick and we’d decided to stay at one place for a while anyway, a week passed by before we moved on.

It’s so important to listen to your inner voice telling you when to get in a routine and when to move onwards. During this time I really settled in myself again and used yoga classes and alone time to release tension and inner conflicts. On a day trip with a scooter we discovered the other, smaller and less known beaches further up north the pacific coast. Still untouched and quiet, those towns are really nice to hang out if you’re looking for the perfect wave to surf and an empty beach to chill at.

In the huge and modern capital San Salvador a few days after – which is so different to San José big letters on that – we ran into this lovely Brazilian guy Irlan who convinced us to go to Honduras.

Apparently Honduras is extremely dangerous to travel, with the highest street murder rates in the world, but we had the best time there I’m telling you! It’s not like we’ve seen the whole country, we just went to a few places along the Atlantic coast, but it was so worth it hallelujah! First few days we were hanging out at a Garifuna village called Triunfo de la Cruz. If I’m honest, we thought we´re able to catch some Rastafarian vibes and smoke good shit but ended up smoking the worst ganja ever and only got bitten by loads of mosquitos.

The only two really good things out of Triunfo de la Cruz: Baleadas (Google it) every day and an address for some later adventure. Our next stop Utila isn’t worth visiting at all, but it’s the gateway to the Bay islands of Honduras. It was my fist time at the Caribbean side of Central America guys but when I saw the prices to get a lift to one of those islands I was highly shocked. No way I would pay that much just to hang out at another beach for a few days.

Jungle Life

So there we were hanging around in an ugly dangerous town in Honduras. Luckily we met Jo (bless you brother) who went out dancing with us and introduced us to Honduras famous Gifiti (made out of roots) which is this kinda stuff you only drink with loads of group pressure lol. The other day while walking through the streets this crazy German guy in his Tuktuk gave us a tour through the city and recommended a German couple with an eco lodge in the jungle just behind the city. So that’s where we went next and it became one of my very favourite memories of the whole trip!

Let’s have an imaginary safari through the jungle: starting with driving from the river bed the twist and turns up hill, seeing waterfalls rushing down the mountains and ending up in a jungle full of humidity and wildlife. The whole valley was unbelievable picturesque with a clear, blue river in the middle. Highly recommended. I recharged my energy so fast by just being in this natural environment. This corner of Honduras is not really well known by Backpackers but that’s authentic jungle guys, so please drag your lazy asses from the islands up the river and find yourself again in this wonderful natural environment.

Cayos Cochinos

After this beautiful jungle experience we were able to message Bety, the lady we got the contact from earlier to visit Cayos Cochinos, a small island group next to the big touristic ones. And daaaamn those islands were sick af. No words can ever describe how Caribbean this was but there’re plenty of photos online of tourists visiting the islands on a daily basis. Do you remember this kind of picture you draw as a child with a half circle on the bottom, a single palm tree on top and a happy sun in the corner? That’s exactly what I’ve seen there. Crazy right? So yeah, the island is as big as your potential living room, with a few families living on it (which feels wrong to write since they all behaved like one big fam) and a bunch of fishing boats delivering lunch and dinner from the sea directly on your plate. We spent a night there and it was the first time (hopefully not the last) I’ve ever slept in a bed placed on sand, maybe two meters above sea level. Water? Turquoise, all shades of blue and white. Sky? Bluer. Sunset? Pretty neat. La Gente? Fiesta.