Honduras is a Central American country of about 112,000 km² that reaches from the Caribbean Sea in the north to a short Pacific shore on the Gulf of Fonseca in the south, with Guatemala to the west, El Salvador to the southwest and Nicaragua to the southeast. About 80 per cent of it is interior highland, made of pine-covered ranges and flat-floored valleys. The rest is two lowlands: a broad Caribbean plain that widens into the Ulúa valley in the west and the savannas and swamps of La Mosquitia in the east, and a narrow Pacific strip around the Gulf of Fonseca. The highest point is Cerro Las Minas in the Celaque range, about 2,870 m. The longest river is the Patuca, almost 500 km. The most important river is the Ulúa, which drains the Sula Valley. The largest lake is Lake Yojoa, 79 km². About 10.3 million people lived there in 2021, according to UN estimates. The best way to see how these pieces fit together is to cross the country by road, from the Pacific to the Caribbean, along the corridor that links its two biggest cities.
Starting on the Gulf of Fonseca: San Lorenzo and El Tigre Island
The trip begins at sea level in San Lorenzo, a port of 35,560 people (2023 estimate) on the Pan-American Highway in the department of Valle. The Gulf of Fonseca is an arm of the Pacific of about 3,200 km² that Honduras shares with El Salvador and Nicaragua. In 1992 a chamber of the International Court of Justice ruled that the three countries share the gulf, gave Meanguera and Meanguerita to El Salvador, and gave El Tigre Island to Honduras.
The Pacific lowlands here are the smallest of Honduras’s regions. They form a flat strip averaging about 25 km wide, built from alluvium washed down from the mountains and turning swampy towards the shore. Mangroves shelter shrimp and shellfish, and shrimp is now San Lorenzo’s main industry. Out in the gulf, the two largest Honduran islands, Zacate Grande and El Tigre, are eroded volcanoes with cones more than 700 m high that ships use as landmarks. El Tigre is a basaltic stratovolcano and the southernmost volcano in Honduras. Its town, Amapala, sits beside a natural deep-water channel and long served as the country’s main Pacific port, until the mainland port at San Lorenzo gradually took over its role from the mid-1970s.
The climate on this coast is tropical wet and dry. The dry season runs from November to April, and April, its last month, is the hottest of the year. Choluteca, about 30 km east of San Lorenzo with 99,980 people, is often called the second-hottest city in Honduras after nearby Nacaome.
Up the Choluteca River to the Tegucigalpa Basin
About 13 km north of San Lorenzo, the highway reaches the crossroads of Jícaro Galán, where the Pan-American Highway meets the road north to the capital. From here the route leaves the hot coast and climbs into the interior highlands. The capital it is heading for stands on the Choluteca River, whose looping course is a good guide to the country’s shape. The river rises near Lepaterique, southwest of Tegucigalpa, flows north through the capital, then turns south through the departments of El Paraíso and Choluteca to reach the gulf near Cedeño. The FAO gives its length as 349 km and its basin as 7,681 km².
Tegucigalpa sits in a mountain-ringed valley at 975 m at its lowest points, with suburbs climbing to 1,463 m. The Choluteca River splits the city from its sister city, Comayagüela, and the rugged hill of El Picacho rises over the centre. At this height Tegucigalpa has the mild climate the highlands call tierra templada. Average highs range from about 25 °C in January to 30 °C in April, and annual rainfall is only about 1,000 mm, because the surrounding ridges block much of the moisture.
The valley’s weakness is its river. In late October 1998 Hurricane Mitch stalled over the western Caribbean, then drifted ashore and across Honduras, dropping historic amounts of rain. The Choluteca washed whole neighbourhoods of Tegucigalpa away. Downstream in Choluteca it swelled to six times its normal size and changed course, leaving the New Choluteca Bridge over dry ground. Honduras suffered more than half of the hurricane’s deaths, and up to 1.5 million people, about a fifth of the population, were left homeless. Tegucigalpa has been the capital since 30 October 1880, when President Marco Aurelio Soto moved the government here from Comayagua, the next stop on the route.
CA-5 Drops into the Comayagua Valley
North of the capital the route joins the CA-5, the highway that connects Tegucigalpa with San Pedro Sula by way of Comayagua, Siguatepeque, Lake Yojoa, Potrerillos and Villa Nueva. It descends into one of the main structural features of Honduras. A long depression runs across the country from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Fonseca and splits its mountains into eastern and western ranges. It is widest in the north near San Pedro Sula. It narrows along the upper Humuya River, opens into the Comayagua plain, passes through narrow gaps south of the city and widens again along the Salvadoran border to the gulf. The highway leaves this easy natural crossing to reach the capital, then rejoins it here.
Comayagua lies 80 km northwest of Tegucigalpa at 594 m, more than 350 m lower than the capital. It had 120,500 people in 2023. Remains at Yarumela show that the Lenca people lived in this valley from about 1000 BC. Spanish captain Alonso de Cáceres founded the city in 1537 under orders to find a site in the middle of the two oceans. Its flat, grassy floor suits cattle and commercial farming. In October 2021, Palmerola International Airport opened on the site of the Soto Cano Air Base, about 60 km from Tegucigalpa, and it replaced the capital’s cramped Toncontín as the main international airport.
The rivers that drain this part of the depression are put to work further north. The Humuya and Sulaco feed the Comayagua River, which is held back in a limestone valley by the El Cajón Dam, officially the Francisco Morazán hydroelectric plant. Its eight turbines produce 600 MW, and its 94 km² reservoir also stores flood water that once spilled across the Sula Valley.
Siguatepeque and Lake Yojoa’s Volcanic Basin
Beyond Comayagua the road climbs again to Siguatepeque, at about 1,100 m. The town had 79,520 people in 2023 and lies almost exactly halfway between the two big cities, about two hours from each. Farming and forestry support the surrounding countryside, and the National University of Forestry Science, UNACIFOR, is based here.
The next stop is the largest lake in Honduras and the country’s largest source of fresh water. Lake Yojoa covers 79 km² at an altitude of 700 m and averages 15 m deep. It fills a depression formed by volcanoes, part of a field of Pleistocene to Holocene scoria cones, craters and lava flows. Steep mountains and Santa Bárbara National Park rise on its western shore. Cerro Azul Meámbar National Park, created on 1 January 1987, covers 300 km² to the east and climbs to 2,047 m. Almost 400 bird species and 800 plant species have been recorded around the lake. The highway runs along its shore, and its fried-fish stalls are the standard rest stop on the drive.
The Ulúa and the Sula Valley Down to Puerto Cortés
North of the lake the road falls through Potrerillos and Pimienta into the Sula Valley, the widest part of the north-south depression and the widest river valley on the Caribbean side. The Ulúa River rises in the central mountains near La Paz and flows north through the valley to the Gulf of Honduras. It is joined on the way by the Sulaco, Jicatuyo, Otoro and Chamelecón. Its flood plain is the most developed part of the country, and the floods it used to suffer every rainy season are why the El Cajón reservoir was designed to hold back up to 10 m of water.
San Pedro Sula, founded by Pedro de Alvarado on 27 June 1536, is the valley’s city. It had 701,200 people in its urban core and about 1.45 million in its metropolitan area in 2023. That makes it the country’s industrial centre and the largest city in Central America that is not a national capital. The CA-5 ends here and the CA-13 carries the route north to the coast. Puerto Cortés, with 73,150 people, sits on a natural bay beside the Laguna de Alvarado and is the country’s largest port. It grew quickly in the 20th century on the railway and banana exports. Its colonial name, Puerto Caballos, was changed to honour Hernán Cortés in 1869. A railway to the Pacific was planned from here in 1850 but never got beyond San Pedro Sula.
The Caribbean lowlands have a tropical wet climate, with rain in every month. Hurricanes are the main hazard. Hurricane Fifi in 1974 killed more than 8,000 people and destroyed almost the entire banana crop, and in 1998 Mitch made landfall on this coast near La Ceiba.
Off the Corridor: Celaque, La Mosquitia and the Bay Islands
A single road misses the country’s extremes, which lie to either side of it. West of the route, the highest ground is in the ranges that continue into Guatemala. Celaque National Park, declared on 5 August 1987, covers 266 km². Inside it, Cerro Las Minas rises to about 2,870 m. Its cloud forest gets a mean of about 2,400 mm of rain a year at higher altitudes, and its nine rivers supply 120 villages, including Gracias.
East of the route, the Caribbean plain widens into La Mosquitia, Honduras’s least-developed region, made of savanna, swamp and mangrove. Much of it floods in heavy rain. The Patuca, almost 500 km long, crosses it to the sea, and the middle and lower reaches of the Coco River form part of the border with Nicaragua. The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve protects 5,250 km² of lowland and mountain rainforest. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982 and was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2011.
Offshore are the Bay Islands. Roatán, about 65 km from the mainland, is a coral island about 59 km long that rises to about 270 m on the southern edge of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. With Utila and Guanaja it forms the Bay Islands department. To see the same country from the capital’s point of view, read our profile of Tegucigalpa. Our guide to the countries that border Honduras follows its three land frontiers. To see where all of this fits on the isthmus, see the geography of Central America.