Page 3 of 4 Hiking in Celaque National Park
You can hire a truck to take you from Gracias to the National Park for about L.120-140 (10 USD), or you can walk which will take about an hour and a half at a quick pace. If you want to hire a truck, ask at a hotel or flag down anyone driving a truck. The driver will be more than happy to receive the income from a visiting tourist. To get to the road to the National Park, take the road past the castle (the castle will be on your right) until you reach a "T" intersection. Take the left turn onto the road that goes behind the gas station, walk past the soccer fields and school to the church. Take a right at the church and continue to walk straight. You will reach a "Y" intersection. The dirt road to the right can be navigated by trucks, but the trail to the left is quicker if you’re hiking.
Celaque means "water box"
in the language indigenous to the area, and this appellation, as peculiar as it
first sounds, provides a clue to the relative humidity in the National Park itself.
The air feels saturated with water. The rain starts every afternoon around two o'clock,
further saturating the air, the ground, and everything in between. There is a beauty
to this watery world, however. The wet air sustains the millions of fireflies that
live in the park, and their presence makes the place just after dusk look like a
section of the Milky Way.
Celaque National Park visitor's center and lodge
A few hundred meters before the entrance to the park is a house on the right where you pay for park admission and lodging. This is also where you pickup a key for the lodge. The park border is marked with a big sign and a gate, but the house is unmarked. There are few houses in the area, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to locate.
Admission to the park is L.30 (2.15 USD) and lodging is L.10 (.70 USD) a night. Once you arrive at the park's border, you will still have about a 30-minute walk (uphill) to the visitor’s center lodge ("Centro de Visitantes"). The elevation increases from 1136 meters to 1400 meters.
Traditional Dining in the Countryside Outside Gracias, Honduras
Living in the National Park is even
more rustic than in town. On the first day I woke with the sun, and backtracked
the trail for some breakfast. There is a small stream just before the visitor center
where you’ll see a sign that says "se vende comida" (food sold here)
with a small arrow. Open the fenced gate and follow the short trail uphill. After
winding around a corner, I saw an adobe house in which a family lives and sells
food to the visitors to the park.
Step inside this mountain shack (left-most door) for an unforgetable meal
Don't be alarmed when you don't find a menu - or even a door to the kitchen! Just enter, say good day, introduce yourself, and tell them you'd like some food. They will feed you well.
My breakfast on this day consisted of fried whole fish caught just that morning with "tamale de frijoles and coco" (bean and coconut tamale), red beans, coffee, and tea de canela (cinnamon tea). The coffee and cinnamon are picked fresh from nearby plants. I also enjoyed fresh corn tortillas. It’s quite an experience to see them made from scratch. First the kernels are broken off the ear of corn, put in a grinder, then grinded finer on the grinding rock, then mixed with water, flattened by hand, and finally put on a metal sheet above an open fire to bake. I was charged just L.15 (1.50 USD) for this meal that couldn’t be any fresher. The gracious host family will stuff you until you can't eat any more.
The stove used to prepare traditional Honduran food
For such lovely people who treat you more like a member of the family than a paying guest, you may want to repeat the kindness by giving them more than your money. I gave them a toothbrush and toothpaste, for example - you would too, if you saw their teeth. They are poor and grow corn and other crops to sell in Gracias to provide things they can't grow, hunt, or catch.
Corn tortillas being made on the stone grinder
After breakfast I began the VERY strenuous hike in the National Park. There are few areas along the trail that get direct sunlight, but the humidity and the heat work together to deplete your energy. The ground is damp - watch for slippery leaves, rocks, and twigs, and it’s a good idea to carry a stick to clear the cobwebs from your way.