Honduras

Honduras occupies the broad middle of Central America, a country of pine-clad mountains, banana plains, and a long Caribbean coast that opens onto the world-class reefs of the Bay Islands. Around ten million people live in a land that gave the region one of its great Maya cities, Copan, and that has wrestled with hurricanes, political upheaval, and one of the highest rates of violence in the hemisphere. Yet its highlands, jungles, and coral islands hold remarkable natural beauty.

Rugged interior highlands cover most of the country, with Cerro Las Minas reaching 2,849 meters as the highest point. Narrow Caribbean and Pacific coastal plains bracket the mountains, and the Mosquito Coast in the east shelters the vast Rio Platano rainforest. The Bay Islands sit on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. A tropical climate brings heavy rains and periodic devastating hurricanes such as Mitch in 1998.

Independent from Spain in 1821, Honduras became the archetypal banana republic under foreign fruit companies in the twentieth century. Today the economy leans on textiles, agriculture, and remittances from a large diaspora. The Maya ruins of Copan, diving in Roatan, and the Rio Platano reserve anchor tourism, while migration, security, and recovery from storms shape the contemporary nation.

• North America
  The third-largest continent, from the Arctic to the tropics located in
• El Salvador
  Central America's smallest, most densely settled volcanic land neighboring country
• Guatemala
  The Maya heartland of highland volcanoes and rainforest neighboring country
• Nicaragua
  The land of lakes and volcanoes at the isthmus's heart neighboring country