Seeking Quetzals in Cobán

We returned to Flores from Tikal and planned to leave the next morning at 8am on a shuttle to Cobán. We booked a shuttle as I couldn’t find a reliable way to get to Cobán on public buses, especially since the journey requires a river ferry crossing too. The shuttle was reasonably priced and would take us direct. All was planned well.

We enjoyed a final afternoon in Flores, did some laundry with “Libby” (I rarely find a Libby back home, but I found one here in Guatemala?!) and ate at a little cafe we found on our first visit; Maple & Tocino, right on the lake front and reasonably priced for HUGE portions.

Then we woke up early to get our 8am shuttle, we were helped by what sounded like gunshots or loud bangs, maybe fireworks, which started at 5am that morning. We didn’t know what they were… We stopped quickly for a takeaway breakfast from Maple & Tocino and arrived at the shuttle at 7:45am to be told that today there were ongoing protests and road blocks all over the country today! So no travel was possible at all…

The government had moved to pass a new bill requiring all vehicle owners to have mandatory insurance, which would be enforced with steep fines. A lot of the population here are below the poverty line, but still own motorbikes so the proposed new law would be very hard on many people. So there were incredibly well-coordinated road blocks on all major roads. You could see them all on Google maps!! Basically the whole country was closed!! That must have been what we’d heard that morning!

We were told that the roadblocks should open up overnight, so the plan from our shuttle company was to set off about 6pm, aiming to drive overnight when the blockades were lifted.

We headed back to our accommodation and asked to leave our bags to enjoy another day in Flores, basically just mooching around the town, exploring more streets and indulging in some cafe culture (yes we ate at Maple & Tocino AGAIN (for the 4th time haha)! Dave said it might be the best avocado toast he’s EVER eaten, so who could deny him that 🤣

At 6pm we headed down to the microbus stop, where many other tourists were gathering. Some bus companies were still not going. Ours said they had information that it would be ok and we’d make it. A lot of people were asking questions about safety too, since many blogs, media and guides recommend not to travel Guatemala at night… But our driver promised us it would be absolutely fine. We also felt ok and trusted our guts with this. We’d not been in Guatemala long, but long enough to feel like we were safe here in the country.

We ended up setting off about 7pm, 2 buses in convoy. We managed to make it about 20 minutes down the road before hitting the first road block…(!) It hadn’t been removed yet, basically a huge truck was parked all across the road and lots of people were out of their vehicles waiting. We waited here for about an hour!! The guys manning the blockade lowered the chains for an ambulance, and interestingly, also for the national post vans too! But they didn’t lower them for us… So we just had to wait. At about 8:30pm, they moved the truck and we could continue on, south towards Cobán.

We made it fine all the way to Sayaxche, where we got the river ferry crossing (we were worried it might be closed, but the roads were generally quite busy still, even this late (22:30 by the time we got here).

We continued on, the roads were so bumpy, and our driver drove quite erratically, blasting some (relatively sick) tunes, so even though it started creeping late, we weren’t really able to sleep much. Just that kind of awful, unrestful sleep. Then at about half midnight we made it to a roadblock near Chinajá, and there was NO WAY round this one. Luckily, our shuttle was well coordinated with another shuttle from our company, doing the same journey in reverse. So the plan was to get out of the buses with our bags, walk across this roadblock and swap buses to continue the journey.

We got out, got our bags and started on foot, past LOTS of locals, clearly still there from protesting, laughing at us and shouting “Gringo!”, it was a surreal experience and we were a bit like, “what the hell is going on”, until we saw the other group of tourists with backpacks coming towards us! Lots of laughter, high-fives with the other group we were swapping with, and still more locals laughing at us, and we finally made it to the other bus to continue on!

We finally made it to Cobàn at about 4am(!), and luckily, I’d been in contact with our AirBnB host for the night, who was completely understanding of the situation and happy to receive us at any time. Since it was 4am, and we were the only ones getting off here in Cobán (everyone else on the bus was continuing on to Lanquin for Semuc Champey – another 2-3 hours away!) the driver took us to the door (almost).

We got straight in bed and fell right asleep!! What a journey! But at least we made it!!

We woke up the next day to the news that the protests had stopped, and the government had decided to drop the new law. So our plans to go via bus to a local national park was still on!

We explored the town of Cobán a little bit and had breakfast at a traditional Maya restaurant. We really liked it here, and were a little confused as to why we saw not one other tourist here. Everyone seems to skip it to go to Lanquin… All on identical routes… But there’s lots of authentic culture here. All the women wear traditional long skirts and belts, there’s tonnes of traditional market stalls, and a lovely town square, plus the town is in a valley surrounded by hills and lush green cloud forest. We really liked it.

On the second day, we’d planned to visit the Biotopo Del Quetzal, a cloud forest reserve 1 hour south of Cobán which is apparently one of the last strongholds of Guatemala’s national bird, the resplendent Queztal. We were also staying overnight there, at Ranchitos Del Quetzal, for Q450 a night, an accommodation inside the park which, according to all the positive reviews, has regular sightings of the elusive Quetzal – in the car park!!

We grabbed a bus from the station for Q30 each and it dropped us right outside the lodge.

We checked in just after 1pm and decided to explore the trails. But at this time we didn’t really see much at all, just a couple of hummingbirds (which were cool) but the light was getting poor at that point.

We decided to get up early the next day and walk the trail again, it was only a 3km circular walk.

We returned and had some dinner and whilst we were eating we heard (more than saw) some amazing birds.

Listen to this!!

We saw some blue jays (unicolour jays they were called) and more hummingbirds (they were violet Sabrewings) and we identified the calls as a slate-wing solitaire… But no quetzals ☹️ we went to bed early…

Unfortunately, the rain woke us up in the night, and when my alarm went off at 5am, it was still raining… Heavily too… So we stayed in bed until it stopped about 7am, then headed out, not very confident that we’d see much of anything…

The trail is pretty, but, yes, we didn’t really see any birds at all haha, and you could still hear the road from almost all of the trail, which was a bit sad. We heard some cool birds (solitaires again) and we saw some small ones (bush tanagers and slate-throated redstarts), but no quetzals ☹️😭

Still we enjoyed exploring the cloud forest, which has a completely different feel to it than lowland rainforest jungle.

We headed back a little disappointed we hadnt seen much and had a tasty breakfast, which was included in the room rate, then headed to the hummingbird garden. We saw way more here (close to the main road and buildings) than we did during the walk into the reserve 🤣 and we spent about an hour trying to get good shots of the hummingbirds.

We then checked out and headed back to the bus stop to catch a bus going back to Cobán… We weren’t even at the bus stop yet and one was coming to we just waved for it to stop and it did, we jumped on, and it was a jam-packed microbus!! No seats left, and only enough room for us to stand with our backpacks on…  But luckily only for the first 5 min before we hit the first town along the way. A couple of people got off here, so we were able to rearrange the bags and find seats. It was a hair-raising ride back to Cobán, as our driver seemed to think he was competing in a rally 🤣

We arrived in Cobán, but at a satellite station not in the centre, so then we got on another bus to the centre. I don’t know how it was possible, but this one was even more packed, and more and more people just kept getting on. We got a bit closer to where we needed to be before deciding to cut our losses and walk the rest of the way haha

We dropped our bags back at the AirBnB then headed out to enjoy Cobán’s streets again. In the dropping sun, they looked even more beautiful.

We decided to skip the popular destination and river of Semuc Champey during this trip, as although we heard of the region’s beauty, we also heard from other people (and saw ourselves – by the sheer amount of people and tour buses going that way) how busy it is with tourists… Unfortunately, this “hidden and off-the-beaten track” destination, no longer looks to be so…

We tried instead to catch some local authenticity, cloud forest views, beat the tourists and perhaps see a few Queztals… Well, three out of four ain’t bad… And we still have opportunities to find Quetzals again, most likely in Costa Rica. We’d just hoped to see them here, in the country seemingly obsessed with them… ☺️💚

On that note… Our next stop now is the town of Quetzaltenango(!), which means ‘the place of the Quetzal’, although with it being Guatemala’s second biggest city, I doubt we will see them here, although Dave was trying to persuade me to do a volcano hike here through the forest, so we’ll see 😉

Catch you in the next one!