We eventually arrived at out first destination in Honduras after a 12 hour and 3 bus epic. Having driven through the not so nice capital, Tegucigalpa, we sped through stunning mountain scenery, cloud forest and some seriously twisty roads and finally arrived at Los Naranjos, our base for the next few days.
It just happens that the hostel is attached to Honduras´s only microbrewery - D& D Brewery. It´s run by Bob Dale from Oregon and his Honduran wife Cynthia. Bob makes 5-6 different brews, a pale ale, amber ale (similar to British bitters), a porter which is a bit like Guinness and fruit beers including raspberry, mango and apricot.
We splashed out and stayed in our own cabin which was great, however the fact that we had no Honduran cash was a bit of a worry. We had managed to change some money at the border, but had not seen an ATM on route and we had managed to rock up on a bank holiday weekend. It was a 2 hour drive to the nearest ATM and all the local bank branches were closed so we couldn´t go to a branch to get a cash advance on a credit card. Bob was very understanding though and we ended up paying our remaining balance (lots of beer was partly to blame) to his mate at our next destination.
The village itself is on the shores of Lake Yojoa which is famous for its birds (as well as being quite stunning). We were introduced to Bob´s slightly eccentric English pal Malcolm who looks like he has been travelling for the last 40 years or so. He has settled on a bird watching career in Honduras.
We went out with him on a slightly overloaded rowing boat with Rafael from the brewery rowing for us, early one morning. The lake was so serene and we saw an amazing selection of wildlife. The lake boasts more species of birds (+400) than the whole of the UK.
Everyone we met in the village and wandering around were really friendly. It was great. Bob obviously could not have been more accommodating! He also showed us his amazing collection of Mayan and Olmec artefacts, some dating back to 700BC. He has unearthed them whilst building septic tanks and swimming pools in the area, over the last 15 years or so. He´s also donated a large number of his finds to museums.
On our last day, the weather was conducive to beer drinking only and we had a great afternoon with other guests including a 50 year old Canadian woman and her 9 year old son who were travelling for a year, and an Aussie/US couple who were on a 6 month honeymoon. They had planned to spend the night in their tent ( not very honeymoonish??) but when the storm set in, they switched to a room.
The grounds of the brewery the next day were slightly wind battered with a few fallen trees. It felt like the majority of the fruits from the avocado, banana, passion fruit and orange trees had been falling on our tin roof all night - hence no sleep. We were sad to leave though!!
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