There are several ways to travel to Guatemala from Mexico City. We choose the option to travel through Palenque and cross the border between Mexico and Guatemala in northern part of Guatemala. Our first real destination in Guatemala will be Tikal, the world-famous Mayan ruin complex. But that is something for next month. From Mexico City we take the bus to Veracruz. The city is of great historical significance, as this is the place where the Spaniards arrived in Mexico for the first time in 1519. Many Mexicans also see Veracruz as an important place because it is the place where Christianity arrived. And in religious Mexico this is an important fact. The city does not offer a lot to travellers, but it is a nice and friendly city, like most cities in Mexico.

For us, Veracruz is just a stopover of some days on our way to Tlacotalpan. This colonial town, founded in 1550, was one of Mexico's most important ports until the twentieth century, and it was one of the few river ports in Latin America at the time. With the arrival of the railways, the role of the port became smaller, and the importance of Tlacotalpan decreased. Many of the original buildings have been preserved, and for that reason, UNESCO has decided to add Tlacotalpan to the list of our world heritage places that needs to be protected. Not a lot of things are happening today in the town. Many young people have gone away looking for work in the big cities, and the older people who stayed try to earn some money from the tourists.

A few hours by bus south of Tlacotalpan lies the town of Catemaco, on a lake bearing the same name. This pleasant town has become a real tourist destination nowadays. Not only because of its beautiful location on the lake, but also because it is known as the centre of witchcraft, prayer healers, shamanism and other paranormalities. The surrounding area of the lake is also beautiful. Here is the northernmost rainforest of Central America located. There is not much left to it, but it is still big enough to maintain sustainable populations of birds and other animals. We spent a few days in a remote low-key resort that is in the middle of the rainforest and is only accessible by boat. Here we have been able to find some beautiful birds in the woods around the resort for a number of days and we even saw a coyote. Nowadays, we enter all of our bird data that we collect during our travels in the database www.ebird.org. This worldwide online community, set up by Cornell Lab of Ornithology (http://www.birds.cornell.edu) and the National Audubon Society (http://www.audubon.org/), aims to collect data of birdlife worldwide and make the data available for scientific research and conservation. The advantage for the birdwatcher is that website is a beautiful tool to manage his own birding activities. In this way cuts the knife on both sides.