Biotopo del Quetzal

We got picked up on time at 0630 from our captain and taken to our small boat (just the three of us) who had parked the boat right across our hotel. He is on older Guatemalan who had learned fishing with his father and now occasionally fishes but taking tourists to the National Park brings him more money and he likes to show them around. Our main purpose of the trip was to see manatees in nature so he adjusted the trip to our wishes and cut a little bit back on the other parts. Our first try at finding them was unsuccessful because apparently they got really shy recently due to some poachers hunting them down 😡 He told us that some foreigners come to hunt them and some locals support them for quick money... And even though they're protected, it's a nature reserve and persons responsible have been reported to the authorities, they're not doing anything to protect the manatees and also the flora in the National Park. He said that the current extension of the biodiversity is only at about 40% that it used to be about 20 years ago by illegal logging activities.
Buuut now to the good part, the scenery is very lush rainforest with lots of monkeys and birds. We entered a river leading into the lake and had a coffee break there. We continued further on into an even smaller river where our boat barely fit and saw a Coati 🥰 And on the way back we stopped at several spots where the manatees feed. And we were lucky, after half an hour we saw several noses peeking up through the water and going back down quickly after taking a deep breath. We continued our watch for about two hours where we saw several completely of them rolling out completely (like whales) 😍 It was great seeing these elusive animals in their natural habitat even though we didn't get too close but we also didn't want to disturb them.

After this impressive experience we made our way (the lights were still on 🫥) to the west as there are some spots we want to see. Unfortunately the road conditions were very bad and we made only slow progress until Ruedi had some hiccups on the way up and eventually didn't even move in the first gear anymore 💣 We made a stop and opened the hood to see that the engine coolant was critically low and no warning light showing ⚠️... We didn't know if that was responsible for it but we decided that it would be good to fill it up. Unfortunately the next mechanic or gas station was some way back and Julia started walking there to get it... Meanwhile a guy with a motorcycle broke down right across the street, so I sat next to him and a few minutes later a guy from the gas station came with gas for him. I tried to explain with my broken Spanish what's wrong and if he could look for Julia as he came from this direction anyways... So I've waited for Julia's return for about an hour when she came back with the guy from the gas station and a huge can of engine coolant! We refilled it and then tried it again but after only about 500 metres and the next steep road it started going slow (veeeeeery limping!!) again. We pushed him at 10 km/h slowly further into the next town with a mechanic to either quickly fix or leave him behind.

The mechanic got straight to work and read out the error message, something about the turbocharger pressure again. And you could hear air flowing somewhere when the car was running. He went under the car and found a loose tube for the turbocharger and a leak in another tube. Half an hour later he had fixed it and we were driving much better again (not normal but at least we're able to drive up some streets). So we decided to try to make it to our today's goal again, the Quetzal Nature Reserve. In the beginning there were still some hiccups but eventually we made it. But the park had already closed then so we just went to a nearby hotel and asked to park there. The adjacent restaurant was still open for half an hour more so we were glad to get a lunch ☺️ Tomorrow morning we're going to do the tour through the rainforest to see the Quetzal, Guatemalas national animal.

I've not been feeling well since this morning with coughing, a headache and a light fever in the evening. Hopefully it'll get better soon... When we went to the van at around 7 it started raining pretty heavily, maybe Ruedi will even get a bit clean after more than a month in dust and dirt 😁Read more