Siguatepeque

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Siguatepeque is a small town in the Central Mountains of Honduras Honduras, Central America at 1100 metres above sea level and surrounded by mountains.

Very attractive and largely undiscovered by most visitors to Honduras, Siguatepeque has few motor vehicles and no air-polluting industries. Siguatepeque is steeped in the clean air of its wooded mountain valley setting.

Siguatepeque, located in the Central Mountains is always very green and colourful, and can accurately be described as a garden city with year-round springtime climate. The region, with its distinctly rural flavour, is primarily dedicated to farm and forest enterprises. The region recently has opened itself up to eco-tourism, with Siguatepeque functioning as a central hub and base for visitors making trips to destinations within Central Honduras.

The climate is mild. There are three seasons. During the wet and fairly cool season between May and November, enough rain falls in the area to ensure luxurious vegetation, while it escapes the excessive humidity of the far hotter and wetter lowland areas. A cooler interlude (November to February) provides seasonal contrast, with temperatures occasionally down to 8ºC (40oF) as cold fronts enter from the north. This is followed by a dry season (February to May), with temperatures achieving a pleasantly warm peak of 32ºC (95oF). Cool winds flow down from the local Calenterique forest and from the immense Cordillera Montecillos, a Biological Reserve on the southern edge of the valley. Even in the hot season air conditioning is unnecessary, with a fan almost always being enough. In the winter heating is rarely needed.

Located almost exactly halfway between Honduras' two largest cities of San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, it is a major stopping point for rest and refreshment for Honduran and international inter-city traffic.

The town is at the centre of a regional vegetable and fruit production area, ensuring a year-round supply of fresh cheap produce.

Founded by the Spanish in 1689 as a religious centre for retreats and monastic training, the population of the town grew through the intermarriage of colonists, the indigenous Lencas and the Mexican Nahuatl immigrants. Allegedly, the name means ‘mount of beautiful women’ in the Nahuatl Mexican dialect. The name Siguatepeque is made up of two words in Nahuatl: Cihuatl: Woman and Tepec:Mount, the mount of women. Siguatepeque is located more than 1,000 metres above the sea level.

In 1861 the town became a municipality in its own right, and a city in 1926.