These past few days have been fairly relaxing and enjoyable. On Wednesday, we went to the natural park and climbed for several hours in order to see a waterfall, which, it turned out, was actually only barely visible from a distance of about half a kilometer from the "lookout point" that we reached through our climb. It was quite a disappointing end-point for our ascent.

However, the country that we climbed through was quite lovely. It was a temperate forest with all kinds of trees that would look appropriate in North America, and it was often easy to forget that we were in Honduras. The highlights were the exceptionally tall pine trees, forming a canopy above us, as well as "babbling brook" that ran through the park. The water was so cool and clear that, if I were really thirsty, I think I might have risked drinking from it. Unfortunately, you just never know what other humans have done upstream.

I think, at this point, that I'm going to head back through Nicaragua and towards Costa Rica. I'm still with my Finnish-Canadian friends, but we've also hooked up with a couple of British girls who are headed South, towards Costa Rica (and, eventually, South America!). As I have to fly out of San José on April 25th, it seems wise for me to go with them, as opposed to continuing North into Guatemala with my other friends. I'm expecting us to head out of Gracias tommorrow and begin the trek South.