Our trip to the Lancetilla Botanical Gardens

Sara and I got up bright and early this morning to venture out and see "the world's second largest tropical botanical garden." The entrance to the garden was only about a 15 min. bike ride from our house which wasn't bad at all......but it was the the trip from the front gate, to the actual park, that almost killed us! All the travel books we read failed to mention that the road to the garden was 2 miles, uphill, on a very rocky and muddy dirt road. We had to stop every 2 minutes, to rehydrate, wipe the continuous beads of sweat off our face and body, complain of the insane heat, and then continue on. At the time, the only thing getting us through was the thought of there being a nice, refreshing, swimming hole waiting for us at the end. Eventually we made it there, but not without a few scars and bruises. Leave it up to me to slip into a puddle of mud and fall off my bike! Nonetheless, we did finally make it to our swimming hole! The stream worried me at first, the water was so cold, and there were tiny little brown fish swimming everywhere, but after I saw Sara walk in, and then I remembered the dreadful trip we went through to get here, I thought, what the heck, I better just make the best of it! And of course, no matter how much insect repellent I put on, I STILL GET BIT!!! The trip to the garden, cost me 26 more bites, yes I counted!!! The bugs have now run out of places to bite me on my arms and legs, and they've now resorted to biting me on my face, fingers and toes! :(


After swimming we walked around the park, through these amazing bamboo mazes, bought mangoes from venders that had stands set up throughout the park, and went in search of another swimming hole that was in the garden. It was way too hot to even think about taking too much time to walk around and look at all the plants, unless of course they were plants that we saw on our way to the next swimming hole! On our way there I took this picture. After seeing so many open fields of green forest and mountains, for some reason it remined me of Jurassic Park, all that was missing were the dinosaurs!