Road trip: El Naranjo, Honduras

On the road to Yaruca, Atlantida, Honduras

Sunday we went on a road trip with our good buddy and fellow blogger Katrina. We headed up the dirt road alongside the Rio Cangrejal, destination Yaruca. Why Yaruca? Just because we have passed the road sign on the highway a million times. I'd never seen it and always wondered what it was like.

Much of the road was built by cutting into the rock. Parts of the road have been washed away. The road follows the edge of the river for most of the trip. Some small waterfalls cross over the road.

This river is a favorite place for families to go swimming on Sundays.


It took us three hours for what should have been about an hour trip, because Katrina and I (mostly me) keep saying, "Stop the car!" or "Go back!" So we spent a good deal of time driving backwards to get a picture of something. I have so many pictures that I'll have to break them up into separate articles. This first article will be about El Naranjo, Atlantida.


We saw this truck along the road. The sign says "Se vende" (for sale). Nothing gets thrown away in Honduras.



El Naranjo is a little village on the main dirt road. It caught my eye, because it had a big sign saying that it had a tourist center. I'm not sure what happened to the tourist center, but the sign also said that there was a vivero de orquídias (orchid nursery), so we parked and trekked on foot up the main gravel path of the village to the nursery.


This is a poinsettia, which grows like a shrub here in Honduras. This one was about 6 feet tall (2 m.)







This is the tiny little orchid nursery. We bought four orchids. I have no idea what kind they are.

I'll do another article later and show my orchids, plus the ones I found growing alongside the road!


I love to see houses like this. Obviously it is a humble home, but look at the beautiful flowers.






The garden inside the fence included a lot of rocks decoratively placed. I talked to the boy in the window, who proudly told me that his mother planted the flowers. I asked him to tell her that we enjoyed her garden.


Walking back down the hill, I asked the orchid lady if someone's house had burned down and it turned out that it was her house. Poor lady. The entire house couldn't have measured more than 8 x 10 feet (2.4 x 3 m.)


This is a typical house with the laundry hanging out to dry.









We saw lots of animals in the little villages and alongside the road on our trip. Cows, horses, chickens, and especially pigs − more pictures to follow.


Blogger makes it soooo difficult to layout photos. If you are reading this by email, you may want to go to the blog, where hopefully the pictures are not all jumbled up.