I am walking with Elmer, a junior guide from the Pico Bonito lodge.  We are on the steep slope of a mahogany plantation.  We pause because we think we have seen a pair of purple fairies whizzing through.

From this slope at the foothills of Pico Bonito is a hazy morning view of Honduras' north coast.  To the northeast, we can see the outer edge of La Ceiba.  On the broad plain in front of us are Dole's plantations – lime green rows of pineapples.  To the west is the Cuero y Salado National Park, where just a sliver of mangroves have been preserved.  Beyond it, the silvery Caribbean.

This Honduran Province, Atlántida, is not the end of the world, but geographically, it is close.  You could say, in fact, that Atlántida is sort of the edge of the wilderness.  Were we to walk east from here, we would end up in the province of Colón, and then Gracias a Dios.  The coastal edge of those Provinces are the Mosquito Coast -  one of the last true wild places left in this hemisphere.  To the east lie marshy riverine lowland so inaccessible that to this day, vast tracts of it remain only thinly inhabitated.  Were we to walk south, we would end up in Olancho, a rugged pine-laden backcountry. 

Even right at the edge of Pico Bonito National Park, we are at the edge of a wilderness still containing places never seen by man.

I don't speak Spanish.  I am in no way ready to travel alone to northeastern Honduras' outpost towns alone.  By staying for a few days at the Pico Bonito lodge, I have the luxury of bilingual guides, I have access to well-maintained trails and I am surrounded by comfort.  My experience in Honduras will be simple and limited.  But it is this place that I have been trying to get to for so long.

Wallace Stegner wrote, "We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."