Guatemala

And an entire bouquet to the Guatemalan friends whose hard work brought the Fourth Roundtable off this year!

What, over with so soon? It hadn’t helped that I’d been under the weather those couple of days, but our week in Guatemala went by far too rapidly. It seemed like we had just arrived when it was time to say goodbye to everyone and to thank Ana Cristina and her colleagues for all their […]

If I had to choose one single site from all the great locations we visited in Guatemala, Finca El Pilar would come out on top. This coffee plantation just outside of Antigua was among my favorite places last year, and it more than lived up to my eager expectations this year, too.
The hummingbird feeders were […]

Pacaya Volcano, with its hot lava flows and vast fields of  fantastically curled sharp basalt, is a wonder, and the views of other volcanoes nearby nearly as good. This one, I believe, is called Fuego, suitably enough, and it spat smoke and steam every few minutes while we watched it from the slopes of Pacaya.
The […]

We were able to spend two generous half-days in the mangroves around Monterrico, where far and away the most impressive sight was provided by flocks of up to 150 Ruddy-breasted Seedeaters in the grassy vegetation along the open channels. And it was here, too, that we came across the most disturbing sight of our week: […]