13/02/2015 Panama City has been a pleasant surprise so far after checking out Casco Viejo, the Miraflores locks and Amador Causeway, all of which I can only recommend! Today marks the beginning of the carnival season here in Panama and I will head town to the Las Tablas area to celebrate it. This update features Lake Yojoa in Honduras. I still can’t pronounce the name correctly, but can certainly summarize that I had a great time exploring the area without a guide.

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Lake Yojoa was a must see for me since I really like nature and the lake provides some great spots to see both wild life and amazing landscapes. My first stop coming from San Pedro Sula was the Pulhapanzak Waterfall. Using the direct shuttle for 35 Lempiras, I arrived around 3:30 PM and had enough time to see the falls before heading onward to the D&D Brewery, located closer to the lake. The waterfalls were really nice and it was the first time to use the “new” used lens that I bought the day before. Not the best, but certainly better than my phone or GoPro camera!

The D&D Brewery offers all sorts of beers from around the globe, as well as a few self brewed. The Raspberry beer was nice but nothing spectacular. The normal lager tasted like other lagers as well, but I think I just don’t have a good enough taste to tell big differences between all the lagers, they just taste pretty much the same to me anyway 🙂 The D&D also has a pool, which was pretty dirty sadly and no one really used it. During dinner I was consulting the local guide for some advice on getting to the lake on my own. He told me that it is not possible without a guide in this part of the lake, giving me even more motivation to head out on my own the next morning.

Getting up around 7AM, I decided that it would be time for another run, the last one being in Cancun, Mexico months ago! The run was pretty nice actually, crossing the village to reach the river and then from there making my way towards the lake. Eventually though, the ground became pretty muddy and it was not possible to reach the shore from that end, so I decided to cross the river and make my way up the mountain to get a good view from the top and then make my way down to the shore. Some locals pointed me in the right direction.

Even though the direction was right, it was pretty hard to get to the top of the mountain though. Obviously, I was not on any sort of path but still tried to make my way through the thick forest. This must have been the third time I’ve done that on my trip so far actually! In the end, I made it to the top but could not find a good spot for a view, so I decided to head down again. Getting out of the jungle after roughly twenty minutes, I found myself in a beautiful spot that must be used by locals, judged by the boats that I could spot along the shore.

The scenery there was just amazing and I was completely alone, giving me a nice happy end for the tough hike before. I made my way along the shore to reach yet another great spot that was even good for swimming in the cold, refreshing water. At some point I had to force myself to stop taking pictures though, trying to catch the next bus to the east part of the lake. My hostel there was called El Cortijo del Lago and I liked it much more than the D&D Brewery. There were only three other guests around, I had the dorm room completely for myself and could even watch some birds before the sunset. The food there was much better as well and having a parrot around always adds some value 🙂 I made friends with a couple from Argentina and we decided to explore the PANCAM parque together in the next morning. More on that in the next update!