Throughout Guatemala
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Hosts Knut Eisermann & Claudia Avendaño are avid
birders specializing in leading small groups in English, German or Spanish. They use
minibuses and, where necessary, 4-wheel-drive-vehicles, stopping at strategic rest stops
during travel to give you the optimal, diverse birding experience. Here we provide an
itinerary for a 21-day tour to give you and idea of what's possible. Tours of much shorter
duration are also possible, organized around your own special interests and needs.
On the Pacific Slope
- Birding with the Guatemala
Birding Resource Center
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This small organization provides customized tours in Guatemala's highlands, the Pacific
Foothills and the Pacific Coast. 10% of their earnings are contributed to Guatemalan
conservation organizations, plus the Center is involved in Sea Turtle protection, Cloud
forest conservation, and the creation of the first-ever threatened and endangered bird
priority list. The organization's founder writes: "We take people to places where
they have experiences they would not otherwise be able to experience on their own. The
tour should be like visiting an old friend who shows you around his/her neighborhood,
sharing their thoughts, feelings, and knowledge about what is being experienced."
Click the More Info icon to be swept to the organization's own Web page.
In the Central Highlands
- In & Around (Physically & Spiritually) a
Blueberry & Medicinal Herb Farm
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In the Mayan village of Chajaneb, 15 kms. from the town of Coban, Alta Verapaz, host Bob Makransky operates a small hotel-resort associated with
a working farm specializing in blueberries and medicinal plants, and he invites visitors
to come explore his area. Bob can organize a number of interesting day-activities as well
as some multi-day trips. Beyond all that, Bob has some credentials enabling him to
introduce any visitor interested to such interesting topics as "psychic development
instruction," "channeling spirit guides," and "nature spirits and
local power places." By no means are visitors expected to pursue the spiritual topics
if they have no interest. There's plenty here to do here even if you don't want to seek
out spirits.
In & Around an Organic Gormet-Coffee Farm
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Next to beautiful Lago de Atitlán, three days and nights of mostly hiking and general
walking around introduce the visitor to many aspects of nature and local traditions in
this area. You stay with the completely bilingual family of Luis
and Lisa Maldonado on their certified-organic, gormet-coffee finca, which has been in
the Maldonado family for three generations. Together, the pair is able to introduce
visitors to everything from the local town which is the only place in Guatemala where
Tzu'tuhil is spoken, to how coffee is grown, to a place where you just might spot the very
rare Horned Guan.
In the Northern Lowlands, the Petén
- Maya Archeology & More
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Archeologist Laura Howard offers an in-depth look at Maya
ruins and artifacts, as she relates the most current understandings about the world of the
ancient Maya. Here she proposes two itineraries mostly based at the Lamanai Outpost Lodge
and Research Center in northern Belize, but ending with a trip to Tikal in northern
Guatemala. She also provides plenty of opportunity to experience modern Maya culture, and
the area's remarkable wildlife.
Chiminos Island Lodge in Maya Ruin Territory
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Host Mynor Pinto and his family provide lodging on an
island in the heart of a very important center of ancient Maya culture in a district of
many interconnected lakes. In recent years this impoverished area has seen environmental
destruction and robbery of archeological sites on an enormous scale. However, now
large-scale archeological restoration is establishing the area as one of the the world's
foremost ecotourism destinations. At this lodge Mynor and his family offer long-term
employment to local people in the hope that this will replace the usual focus on
short-term gain by cutting ancient trees and looting ruins. Besides experiencing a
peaceful, beautiful environment at the lodge, visitors can take ruin trips, fish, canoe,
hike and observe nature.
A Community-Owned Spanish-Language School offering Ecotravel
Experiences
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This is not a typical EarthFoot small-scale operator, but rather a very unique program we
want to support. It combines intensive language instruction with informal environmental
education. The program's mission is to immerse students in the language, culture, and
ecology of the Petén region of Guatemala, an area renowned for its tropical forest and
ancient Mayan ruins. At first the program strikes you as a hodgepodge of different ideas,
but in the end the concept seems to work, and to mean a lot to the people who take part in
it.
More information on Guatemala:
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