Fortunately, laying on the beach isn't the only activity on offer in Honduras. There’s plenty more fun stuff you can do in Honduras besides getting a nice and crispy tan! They include:
Enjoy a pleasant walk in the tropics
Honduras botanic gardens are excellent places to enjoy nice day walks and experience the sight of tropical rainforest plants and birds without having to venture too far of the tourist trail.
Blue Harbor Tropical Arboretum in Roatan and Carambola Botanical Gardens in Sandy Bay are very popular botanic gardens in Honduras, but if you have to visit one it'll have to be Lancetilla Botanical Garden in Tela. Lancetilla is not only the world's second largest tropical botanic garden but the garden also offers the opportunity for fun guided tours and river swimming.
Learn to dive
Honduras is a fantastic place for scuba diving and one of the best places in Central America to get dive certified without burning a hole in your pocket. The island of Utila is overall the cheapest place to get certified, though you’ll find many more affordable options in Roatan, West End and West Bay.
There are around a dozen of dive centers to choose from with prices ranging from $108 to $160 per 4-5 dives. Some of the most popular dive operators in Honduras are West Bay Divers, Barefoot Divers, Enomis Divers and Captain Morgan's Dive Centre.
See wildlife and enjoy jungle tours
Honduras is a fantastic place for ecotourism and wildlife photography is, hands down, one of the top tourist things to do in Honduras. Best of all, there are hundreds of places in the country you can go to view and photograph all kinds of animals.
The island of Roatan is a popular tourist destination for families with kids to see and pet wildlife. You can pet dolphins at Anthony’s Key resort (Sandy Bay), see bird and butterflies at the Butterfly Gardens in West End and feed iguanas at Arch’s Iguana park in French Harbour.
However, if you want to watch birds and other wildlife in a more natural setting you'll need to get slightly off-the-beaten-track to mainland Honduras. Macaw Mountain Bird Park in Copan is one of the best spots in the country for bird spotting, while La Moskitia, Pico Bonito and “Cuero y Salado” national parks (near La Ceiba) offer nice opportunities for eco-lodge stays, as well as guided boat and jungle tours.
Visit the ancient ruins sites
Visiting the Mayan ruins is without question, one of the most popular tourist things to do in Honduras. The Maya site of Copan is where you'll find the old Maya ruins sites and landmarks, which include step pyramids, sculpted monuments, plazas, tunnels, an amphitheatre, temples and tomb sites (Sepulturas).
The most interesting structures at the Copan site are the Ballcourt and the Hieroglyphic Stairway which is the oldest surviving Maya hieroglyphs script in the world. Visiting the Copan site costs around $17 (including entry to Copan museum) and you can explore the site at your leisure. However, if you want to learn about the Mayans it’s well worth hiring a local guide from the nearby town of Copan Ruinas (10 minutes walk from the Copan ruins site).
Swim and dive with marine life
As mentioned earlier, relaxing on a beach and enjoying water-based activities are some of the top tourist things to do in Honduras, though fun on the water doesn’t get any more exciting than under it! Diving and swimming with dolphins and sharks is really a must, especially if you’ve never experienced swimming with these beautiful creatures before.
Honduras’ Bay Islands are the prime destination for snorkeling with dolphins and diving among reef sharks. Utopia dive village in Utila and the Waihuka dive center in the island of Roatan are two of the most popular.
Take a zip line canopy tour
A visit to Honduras would not be complete without doing a zip lining tour. Just like the rest of Central America, zip lining is big in Honduras so there are many options for tourists to choose the right zip line tour in Honduras. Give or take, you can expect to pay around $50 per person.
The most popular destinations for zip line tours in Honduras are the Bay Islands (Islas de la Bahia) and national park Pico Bonito where you get to zip line through the canopy of the jungle. Popular operators include Gumbalimba Park, Jungle Top Zipline Adventure, Christopher Tours, Pirates of Caribbean zip line, and South Shore zip line.
Enjoy a horseback ride
Just like scuba diving, horseback riding is a fairly inexpensive thing to do in Honduras and while in the country it's a good idea to do a horseback tour of some kind.
You can enjoy horseback riding on the beach in Roatan’s West End with El Rancho Barrio Dorcas and Christopher Tours, or a countryside tour on horseback around Copan and La Ceiba with Finca el Cisne, Omega Tours (Jungle Lodge) and Hacienda San Lucas. You can expect to pay roughly $65 for a typical 2 hour ride.
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