The Never-ending road

Riding on a Guatemalan chicken bus is one of those adventures you eighter love for the excitement or repel because of the honest danger. The colorful passengers, doubtful sobriety of the driver, smell of fried chicken and awe-inspiring scenery are all part of the experience. On this windy November morning, the bus zig zags for eight hours along the unbeaten roads that travel north from Guatemala City to the Lachuá National Park.

Lachuá is one of the largest nature reserves of Guatemala, best known for it’s pristine lagoon, it is one of the few places left where you can still see many endangered species in their natural habitat.

The heavy deforestation around the park in the last few decades has reduced the living habitat for hundreds of species to less than 4 km2. On the hour long hike from the entrance to the visitors center it’s suprisingly common to see several snakes, monkeys, tarantulas and even the unforgiving claws of the majestic Jaguar on a old tree trunk.

This same park has recently been in the center of a government feud. Inexplicably the main transcontinental highway was designed to cut through the reserve with its six high speed lanes and it’s forever dangerous speeding vehicles.

Francisco, one of the park keepers, explained the highway is the least of their worries, and invited me to join him on forest patrol the next day for something far more dangerous.

From the camp site, we walked for about two hours to what he called ‘’the heart of the forest’’, a small clearing where he asked me to sit down, close my eyes and remain silent. -’’Most people come, and just see trees, but if you close your eyes you hear life’’-

Francisco walked mostly in silence, stopping here and there when he found something remarkable for me to notice.

We saw more and more tree stumps as we walked to the edge of one of the illegal settlements that has thrived inside of the nature reserve. ‘’More than 50 families live here now, and this is not the only camp’’- he said- ‘’The problem is that they hunt the animals. They even killed two jaguars last year’’.

Upon returning to Guatemala City it was almost impossible to imagine this vastness of concrete and steel was once a place not so different from that forest, and it left me wondering how many more generations will be able to walk into a clearing in the woods and wonder about our place in this universe.

An adventure is just the outcome of asking the right questions.