We left Copán bright and early on the 29th and caught two buses to Gracias. On the first bus we saw an uglier side to Honduras when we left a larger town and four men demanded money from the bus conductor for stopping in "their" area. We presumed that they were from a gang- not nice. The second bus was another ancient specimen from Honduras' collection and was a particularly unpleasant fume and dust filled hour.

When we arrived in Gracias we went to a cafe for lunch then had a wander round, trying to find some of the places in the Lonely Planet book which are helpfully only described as being south west from the park. A very helpful lady dragged her two children along to take us on a five minute walk to find a hotel where we got some information about walking in the national park.

Today (30th) we did a fairly strenuous 4.25 hour walk in the nearby national park, up to see a view of a waterfall. It was a nice walk where we didn't see anyone else. In fact the book we had to fill out at the entrance showed we were the first foreigners to visit in three days.

We got a tuk tuk to take us there which was a slightly hair raising experience as it was nearly eight kilometres of very bumpy road. It was also quite difficult to communicate with the driver as he seemed to make the whole arrangement more complex than it was in very fast Spanish. But we managed and we made a new friend in Oscar!

There seems to be very few tourists in Gracias and the only places we've seen other tourists has been in hotels or a restaurant. It's good to get off the beaten track. However it has been more difficult to communicate in Spanish. My guess is that they're not used to speaking more slowly and clearly as they do in the more touristy places. Tomorrow we leave for our fourth country, El Salvador.

Katy