La Tigra

Walking to find the entrance 

My day trip to la Tigra (a rain forest national park approximately an hour and a half away that is home to tigers)

6:00 am- My alarm goes off- time to get ready for our hike.

6:10 am- I try to take a shower and realize that we have no water. Thus, I just started the day out sweaty.

6:50 am- I meet the girls in my neighbor at the corner by the “watcheman” and we reach our school at

7:20 am- where after reading our guidebook as to where to catch taxis, buses and entrance fees. We learn that that if we don’t make the last bus at 3:00, we have to walk 4 km to get to the next bus stop. We are now very motivated to make it on time.

7:30 am- The twelve of us pile into three taxis.

7:50- The other taxi gets lost, and then we arrive at the bus station, but some guy tells us that it is not the bus station, so we take the taxi to a store about fifteen minutes away.

8:05- we get lost.

Our truck ride on the way up the mountain

8:30- we finally arrive at the correct bus stop.

8:40- I really have to go to the bathroom, so inside of this grocery store that is more like a inside market, I search out the bathrooms. We find them and a woman tells me I have to pay two lemps in order to user her bathroom, but she wouldn’t take my two because it was ripped. Finally, I just went and gave her the two.

10:00- 11:30- The bus, which is actually just a school bus, comes. There were plenty of open seats, but Eustian decided he would sit next to me. Now, I have never met Eustian before this trip, but he lives near me in Tegus and apparently gets to see us all walking to school every day, and so he was excited to finally talk to one of us. I now, also, know many details of this man’s life, despite just wanting to look out the window to avoid being car sick. Either way, it was a pretty ride up a mountain.

11:30- Our bus driver tells us to get off at a field/abandoned barn and walk down the set of stairs and we will be at the Tigra. We walked down the longest set of stairs I have even seen, which dumped us on to a mountain road, which we just kept walking on because there was nowhere else to go.  After walking a mile or so, we came across a town.

Recommend Calvin.... in a CAVE! 

11:50- we asked some women who were working how much longer walk it would be until we got to the Tigra, and they told us it would be an hour and half hike up the mountain to get to entrance of the park, where if you remember, we were planning on hiking in.

12:00- some man in the town offered to drive us up the mountain in the back of his pickup truck. We then spent the next twenty five minutes driving up the mountain with sudden drop-offs, steep banks, and crazy switch backs. They told us they would be back at four because a bus came at five.

12:30- We finally made it the Tigra welcome center- which was more like a house on the side of the road with a picture of animals that lived in the forest. We signed in, paid our fees (70% less because we said we lived in Honduras), and got a map. By this point we were hungry, but the “cafeteria” couldn’t handle twelve people, so a couple girls ran down to small store and bought some bread, chips, and water to share.

1:00- we finally started our three our hike.

On our little look out post. Thank you Canada

1:30- we realized we had been walking the wrong way for the past thirty minutes, and we turned around.

2:00- we ended up on the correct trail and started hiking. It was so beautiful! I had an amazing time. It was a lot of work, but well worth it. We discovered an abandoned cave, a look out post built by Canada, and an assortment of bugs. It was so much fun!

2:45- we turned around only to realize that we counted all the time when we were lost, so got back very early.

3:25- we ordered some food from the small store down the road. We ended up getting rice, fried bananas, eggs, and beans, a very typical Honduran meal, but it was so delicious!

4:10- “Hom” (short for hombre because we didn’t actually know his name) came with his truck and brought us right to the bus station because he wanted to make sure we were safe.

4:45- it starts to rain.

5:00- it starts to pour.

5:45- the bus comes.

Our truck ride back to the bus. 

6:45- we arrive at the gas station and get in three more taxis.

7:15- Home!

What a crazy, fun-filled, adventurous day!  We only ended up actually being in the park for approximately two hours, but either way, it was a great day.