Site Report: Los Tarrales, Guatemala

Visits

• 2009-02-03: We took a mid-morning chicken bus from Santiago to our next destination, Los Tarrales. The website for this private reserve, one of the oldest in Guatemala, looked promising. One of my biggest complaints about humans is that it seems that in order for a building to be habitable, it must have all signs of nature cleared from the immediate vicinity and replaced by lawn or concrete. I find this to be the case even in nature reserves, and that is why I was especially intrigued by staying in one of the Los Tarrales electricity-free tree houses. We arrived at the finca in the early afternoon, and we were promptly given a tour of the facilities. Believe it or not, the employee who showed us around tried to talk us out of the tree houses which were "far away" and "not ready." A short time later, however, we were sitting on the balcony of the tree house eye-level and five feet away from the lower canopy of a shade coffee plantation. I made arrangements to go with Josue on an early morning hike up the volcano to look for the Horned Guan. We woke up at 2:30 AM, pounded some home-grown coffee, and drove for almost an hour to the trail head. This is where I got my first view of the Southern Cross (for this trip). The hike up the volcano was brutal. It was a steep climb the entire way for about three hours. I have to admit that I was almost thinking about giving up, but Josue had told me earlier that a 62 year old lady had done the hike in the past. When we got to the "cloud forest", where the guan lives, it had become very windy. It would be just my luck to dip on this bird after the effort I had put forth to get to the habitat. I barely had energy to move. Lalo and Josue walked further up the mountain in search of the guan while I waited in ambush on the trail. About an hour later, the guides had found a guan, and I set upon bushwhacking and rock scrambling to get a good look. The hike back down the mountain seemed anti-climactic. The high winds hindered any serious birding. Part way down the mountain, I thought I heard thunder in the distance. Just my luck. But, it turns out that the sound was not thunder, instead the sound was a volcano erupting nearly 50 miles away.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• North America
• World

Trips

• Mexico to Panama