2020 Part 1 – Honduras

There’s no snow to shovel here my friends…

We are snowbirds – Season 1. We arrived in Trujillo, Honduras on January 13, 2020. This was exactly 517 years, 4 months, 30 days (or 188,983 days if you prefer) after Christopher Columbus landed there in 1502. Needless to say we were able to get to Trujillo from Toronto considerably quicker than Chris got there on his fourth and final voyage to the Americas. Coincidentally, as was the case for Chris, this was the first time we touched the Central American mainland. If only we had cruised down on No Yards (not impossible to do from the Great Lakes but far from reasonable) you might consider us modern day Columbuses.

Our friends Randy and Cathy (let’s call them R&C for this post) live in Trujillo when it’s cold up north, and spend the warm North American months on their boat, named ‘Persistence’. Persistence is easily recognizable on the water because of the Harley Davidson motorcycle they carry aboard on her aft upper deck. They have become good friends in the short time we have known them, helping us understand how things work, or should work, on our boat and helping us become familiar with Georgian Bay. If you have been following along with my sporadic posts here, you will know that our plan is to spend Canadian winters somewhere warm. We entered retirement with no specific destination planned for our first winter, so when R&C suggested that we might want to consider Trujillo, we went for it.

On the Northern coast of the Honduran mainland, on the Caribbean Sea, Trujillo isn’t a place to consider for a weekend jaunt. But once you’re there you’ll find a quiet, beautiful area that has only a few English speaking tourists, but a small expat community primarily from Western Canada, Ontario, and the United States. Some have made Trujillo their year-round homes while others spend anywhere from a few weeks to a few months there each year. We were able to make many new friends in the three months we spent there thanks to the group’s regular social activities, and of course our friends R&C. Our trip to Trujillo consisted of a flight from Toronto to San Salvador (really the first time we touched the Central American mainland if you want to get picky about it) followed, after a short stopover, by a flight to Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras. These flights were with Avianca Airlines, and it felt like flying in North America decades ago….free meals, free beer, and exceptional in-flight service – highly recommended. After spending the night in Tegus (seems many people call it that), a six hour drive across mostly reasonable roads, through pine forest and mountains, took us to Trujillo, about 400 km to the northeast. Like I said, not really the place for a weekend jaunt.

We didn’t get to see as much of Honduras as we had hoped on this visit, but it certainly was a great way for us to spend a good part of our first winter retired. We will definitely return at some point in the not too distant future so we can see the parts of the country we wanted to see but didn’t get to this time around. Big thanks to all of our new friends in Honduras…we’ll see you again soon.

A few thoughts on Trujillo before I leave you:

• Not as much wildlife as I expected; we did see iguanas, a few snakes, some toucans, vultures, scorpions, hawks, and various other birds. Lots of geckos, and some really big unidentified bugs. Didn’t see any monkeys as we had hoped to.
• They must grow the biggest chickens in the world down there. It seemed every chicken breast we bought was at least twice as big as we’re used to in Canada, and they were very tasty.
• Same goes for the carrots and other vegetables there; bigger than I’ve ever seen, and very delicious
• Finally, the locals in Trujillo are some of the nicest people you could ever meet. Most speak little-to-no English, but they try, and if you try to meet them halfway with broken Spanish, they truly appreciate it.