Recent Press
Kentucky Monthly
December 2005
Family Homestead
Ex-Kentuckian opens B&B in Honduras
By: Soll Sussman
Relaxing outside the Hacienda San Lucas on its hilltop perch past the Mayan ruins, sipping on a Honduran Salva Vida beer and admiring the view, you just might have found the Top of the World.
That thought must have crossed Flavia Elisa Cueva’s mind when she visited the family homestead in Copán Ruinas, Honduras, in 1995 after 30 years in Kentucky and decided to open a restaurant and inn there.
“I feel like I’m just a caretaker,” she said. Always speaking with a dramatic flair, the 57-year-old hacienda owner said she restored it “to open and share it with the world-that’s what happened.”
Flavia came to Henderson Community College in 1965 as a Rotary Club exchange student. She married Mike Osburn in 1970 and had three children (all now University of Kentucky graduates), taught high school for seven years and had a catering business before returning to her native country.
The simple, one-story adobe structure at Hacienda San Lucas opened four years ago featuring dinner seating for 25, mostly on the open-air patio, since expanded to a comfortable 50. There’s a tasteful, sophisticated bar inside near the kitchen, where the choices include a Flavia Special of orange juice, vodka, and amaretto. The bed and breakfast started with two always-in-demand sleeping rooms and recently expanded to seven.
No matter how good the food, it’s the patio and long, sloping lawn stocked with conveniently placed chairs and recliners that make Hacienda San Lucas remarkable. Overlooking the Copán River and the valley below, it’s a perfect spot for watching the sunset or the world go by. Lanterns and candles lit after sunset make it truly magical.
The hacienda is a five-minute ride from Copán in one of its ever-ready fleet of three-wheeled mini-taxis, but it is still remote and rural enough to feel as though you have escaped the modern world.
Truth be told, I didn’t eat there because the restaurant was booked for a special event during my brief stay in Copán. I only hung out with chef Carlos Rivera by the hearth as he prepared a multi-course meal featuring, among other lush-looking wonders, green salad with red onion, green mango and grapefruit; a new-corn cream soup; tamales filled with adobo made of sesame and pumpkin seeds and three kinds of peppers; roasted chicken; boiled plantains; and, for dessert, papaya in a light syrup with all-spice and cinnamon.
Rivera, a native of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, trained in Italy before coming to Copán a year ago. The young chef bases his seasonal menu on ancient Mayan traditions, with corn, beans and squash as the three basic elements. Because the hacienda does not have electricity, all ingredients are fresh and brought in daily. Solar panels provide hot water. Cooking is done on the hearth.
Copán, in northwestern Honduras seven miles from the Guatemalan border, is one of the main attractions on the mainland. The ruins represent the southernmost countryside is gorgeous, lush, and gleaming green, great territory for nature walks, waterfalls and assorted adventures.
Cueva’s father had studied in Guatemala to become a physician and moved to Tegucigalpa, but he brought his family back regularly for vacations. “I hated to come to Copán,” Cueva laughed about her childhood. “I was a brat.”
Once the decision was made to return-“to make my life simple!” she laughed as the cell phone kept ringing- she found that the remaining walls on the hacienda were crumbling. “I started tearing it apart,” she said. The foundation remained, but the rest was rebuilt with traditional methods.
“We made our own adobe; we carried materials by horses and mules,” she said. “All the work was done with machetes and hand tools. I was doing things at 52 that I couldn’t do at 30.”
Her father, who died two years ago, was able to see the restoration. “He was so excited that his place was not going to disappear,” she said.
“I opened San Lucas in 2000, and I decided to restore authentic Mayan Copán cooking,” she said. “Now the world comes to me-the food becomes part of the mystique. It’s a labor of love.”
For reservations, contact us at: info@haciendasanlucas.com.