Things to Do in La Paz

The high Lenca ridge above Guajiquiro town, where potato fields give way to pine, then to dripping cloud forest and a 2,000-metre view over half the department.

A vast, barely visited cloud forest massif on the roof of western Honduras, reached from Marcala and best walked with someone who lives on it.

The cloud forest wall between La Paz, Comayagua and Intibuca, source of the rivers half the valley drinks and the region's most rewarding forest walk.

A tall, cold curtain of water in a forested gorge south of Marcala, named for the swifts that nest behind the spray and easy enough for a half day.

A bare-topped highland peak in the far south-west of La Paz, with the widest horizon in the department and hardly a visitor on it.

Naturally heated pools in the hills outside Marcala, the standard local cure for a day spent climbing cloud forest or picking coffee.

Named for the whistling roar it makes in full flow, this squeezed chute of white water is the loudest and most photogenic waterfall in the Marcala hills.

The department's clearing house for highland coffee, Lenca vegetables and a plate of baleadas that costs less than your bus fare.

The trading floor of Honduras's most famous coffee town, where the beans that carry the country's first denomination of origin are sold beside cabbages and cuajada.

A small Lenca highland market on a plaza at 1,800 metres, where the potatoes, beans and blankets change hands before the cloud comes down.

The comfort stop every Marcala bus makes — coffee, tajadas and highland produce sold at the roadside where the mountains begin.

One of the most important archaeological rock shelters in Central America, where excavated layers pushed the story of maize and early farming in Honduras back thousands of years.

The whitewashed parish church on the central park, the historic heart of the departmental capital and the easiest twenty minutes of history in the region.

A tiny hill town in the south of La Paz where tiled roofs, cobbles and an old church survive almost untouched, and where the whole visit is a slow walk.

The shaded square at the middle of everything in La Paz: benches, shoeshines, a church front, and the best free seat in the department for watching a small Honduran city work.

Marcala's green breathing space, a short walk from the plaza, where coffee-town families walk in the cool of the evening and visitors finally sit down after a day in the hills.

The recreation park locals actually use in La Paz: a walking circuit, sports courts and shade trees a quarter of an hour from the central plaza, busiest at dusk and free every day of the year.

The organic cooperative that made Marcala coffee famous, where you can taste it at the source and see the mill, the compost and the school behind the beans.

A grower-owned coffee bar in the middle of Marcala where the cup in front of you was picked on the ridges you can see from the door.

The shaded plaza where the department's coffee finally gets drunk slowly — a cluster of small cafés and comedores facing the cathedral.

The waterfall people in Marcala send you to: a cold, loud drop into a green pool at the bottom of a coffee valley, reached by a twenty-minute walk that anyone reasonably fit can do.

High, cold, cloud-fed forest on the Opatoro and Guajiquiro ridges, where Lenca farming country runs straight into the water source for half the department.