Climbing El Elefante

After three days of bottomless coffee and sweets and sitting through presentations at the Project Honduras Conference, I was itching to get outside and move around. After a lovely brunch of loroco, quesillo, and egg scramble, pan de banano, crepas con mermelada y nutella, and Jumex Apple Nectar, Graham and I decided to tackle El Elefante (that's the elephant for those non-Spanish speakers out there). As many of you know (because I have bragged about it incessantly), we have a sweet view from our back porch. Off to the right, we can see downtown Copan Ruinas, straight ahead we have a vista of mountains in the distance, and to the left we can see a large hill, dotted with cows and, occasionally, children flying trash bag kites. The hill is commonly known as El Elefante and we've been eager to climb it since we arrived in Honduras a month and a half ago.


So, after brunch, we donned our boots and and sunscreen and headed out for our hike. A hole in the barbed-wire fence along our road marked our trailhead and we both squeezed through without putting our tetanus inoculations to work. Crossing the river was a little trickier. Our options were to:

1. Rock hop.
2. Wade across.
3. Balance on a rusty pipe.
4. Caulk the wagon and float it.

We went with option number #3 and scooted our way across the river without any problems. After crossing the fields where Graham sometimes plays pickup soccer with some Honduran teenagers, we made it to the bottom of El Elefante. Of course, there wasn't exactly a marked path, so Graham and I had to blaze our own trail to the top. Though I ended up ankle deep in mud, we made it to the top and successfully avoided the cows and their massive droppings. The view from the peak was pretty great. Not only could we see the town of Copan Ruinas and the Mayatan School, where Graham works, we could see our own house too!