Yuscarán

The charming colonial town of Yuscarán sits a little too far out from Tegucigalpa to be an easy lunch trip (at least not in the way closer Santa Lucía and Valle de Ángeles are), but it gets high marks for having better-preserved colonial atmosphere. As happened in the capital, silver was struck here in the late 17th century, and Yuscarán boomed through the end of the 1800s. The entire town was declared a national monument in 1979, and some 200 buildings from the pre-independence era remain intact here with strict standards on their maintenance. The town of about 2,000 Yuscaranos sits in the semitropical Pacific Slope, a transitional area between the highland capital and the coastal lowlands. Though it isn't as high as Tegucigalpa, at 850 meters (2,800 ft) of elevation the town still enjoys a pleasant year-round springlike climate that is a welcome refuge from southern Honduras's stifling heat.