El viaje

We left around 9am. From Semuc Champey we went straight to Cobán. I had to do the Orchids first because they were my highlight and for birthday reasons. Also , they deserve their own post. We got in Cobán and immediately went to a mall. Lu and i felt weird to be surrounded by so much concrete again but we had to run a couple of errands, get new cash etc.

Right after Coban, there was the orchid park. Just one more for good measure.

Maybe two for an even better measure!

We were told that the Alta Verapaz region is a good place to potentially see the Quetzal. The Quetzal is national bird and the name of the currency in Guatemala. This is what the money looks like:

But who cares about money when you can see the real thing, or at least try to see it. So let the hunt begin!

The forest here is called bosque nuboso which translate into cloudy forest but since the forest is on the mountains and since many clouds are like mist when you stand in the middle of them and since when you stand in the middle of a cloud you might as well be in middle earth , i made misty mountains out of it. Shout outs to the all the dwarfs!

Like it or not , these mountains or the forests carry their name for a reason.

The dwarfs gold in our case was the Quetzal and we were getting closer.

Not really knowing where to go after we had seen the Quetzal we decided to stay not much longer than 20-30 minutes to avoid driving in the dark. We should have but we did not know that we were in for another treat!

Our short Quetzal search ended up being a super hardcore hike through a super humid and super steep jungle path with lots of stuff to discover.

I cant tell you what all of this stuff is since i have never seen any of it before but this is a cardamom flower and i love it!

And there were of course many of the master recyclers in all shapes and colors. Tons of mushrooms.

Whenever i see many different and new ones i ask myself how many secrets they are still hiding. They can decompose plastic and basically anything else on the planet. The strongest and best antibiotics come from them, penicillins. They connect all other plants with their insane mycelium networks. Also commonly used as parachutes for fairies and when you eat some of them, you understand this stuff even better. Amazing fungi! Especially this one: It even had a snail on or in it. Jojo fungus maximus!

Long story short. No Quetzal in sight. And its not like we weren’t looking.

Having spent way more time in the forest then originally expected we realized it was after 5pm already and we did not have long until sundown. That was not the biggest problem though. Because when it rains here . It fucking pours…

And even that was not the biggest problem..But our ac compressor does not work, so every 3 minutes or so you have to wipe the windshield in the front so you actually see.

And this is bad because ,even though paved, there is all kinds of things lying on the roads..

The further down we will get on our journey the more it will rain. And another thing that of course we did not realize back in Baja ( since it basically never rains there) , is that Jim has a little hole in the windshield silicone. With heavy rain it keeps dripping in. So i constantly had wet feet while driving behind a cloudy window..We need to fix both things, asap.

So decision was made, we are going to Guatemala City.

Every now and then the rain stopped but we could already see the next cloud heading our way.

Its creepy because many times you actually drive into the rain clouds since you are so high up and they hang so low.

The rest of the drive was a very gloomy two hours through the rainy twilight and eventually utter darkness.

Having spend 12 hours on the road, with obvious orchid and forest breaks, we were very happy when we got into the city.

Spare parts for Jim, clothes washing for us and hopefully we will meet Hugo tomorrow!

What a day.