La Tigra

The day after my journey to the statue of Jesus I headed further up that road to a national park called La Tigra. My first surprise was that on most of the signs there was a most familiar leaf to be seen! a red one, surrounded by 2 red stripes!

Apparently Canada has something to do with the park, although what exactly no one seemed to know. This park is the source of most of the water for the city of Tegucigalpa and is far up in the mountains....it may have been created to preserve the freshwater as clearcutting is a national sport in Honduras and that reeks havoc on streams and rivers. The visitors center had a beautiful mural! This is just half of it...

I arrived as the morning was ending and elected to go no a 2.5 hr. hike that would make a nice loop. I strolled along leisurly as I had about 4 hours, stopping to sit by streams and look at trees or read a book. I finally got to see a plant/tree that I have been looking for for the past 4 months! A tree fern!

Ferns are one of if not the first plant and this one is as big as a tree with trunk and all! I found it on the road outside the park as I was heading back to the bus. Usually they are no more than a meter ff the ground with no trunk, just leaves coming out of the ground.

At almost the same spot a car was coming down the road from the park so I decided to put out my thumb as the bus was still going to be a while.... After passing me the car stopped and I hopped it. It wasa family that I had passed on the trail and they were very friendly. It was a father, his son, and his grandchildren, although the kids were from another sibling. The sons name is Omar and after talking a while we decided to head back to the park the next day and see more of it. He is a teacher and had the week off. This proved to be very lucky for me as I finally met a local who also spole fluent English. I was able to pick his brain about tons of things to do with the city and country, from politics to the education system. The next day we did a six hour hike roundtrip to a waterfall and saw many plants and animals...The animals consisted of birds and lizards! One posed for a photo!

There were many neat plants and some great views, sometimes cloudy and sometimes not! Here is the wierdest leaf I have ever seen! You may need to enlarge it to see why! I discovered it by wiping my hand on it! Bit of a mistake!After a long walk and a stop for a snack of giant avocado and totillas we made it to the falls!

Here is Omar my companion for the day...He was also going to show me some of Tegucigalpas nightlife but after the return hike we could barely walk and called it quits! I made one other friend on the hike and here he or she is!! The next moring I was off to Nicaragua, the last country on my journey!!!