Paris, Spain 2005 Journal Mar. 9 Santa Cruz del Quiche, Depto. El Quiché, Guatemala. We spent all day on Mar. 7 preparing the specimens we had collected. Yesterday we left Guatemala City and made a short stop in Antigua, after which we drove to Sta. Cruz del Quiché. We wanted to find B. melana at the type locality above Santa Cruz. We drove up the road towards Santa Rosa at night and stopped at the highest point to search a roadbank and in the forest. We looked for 45 min- the others searched the road cut while I looked in some of the many branchy lianas in the forest of pine and oak trees. All we found was one dead snake that Ernesto found on the road (GPS at car -15.08003°N, 91.07616°W [WG584, 10m acc.], 2449m elev.). We were ~9 km by road from Sta. Cruz. In the morning we drove back to the area and tried to get permission to work in the municipal forest where we had been last night. We turned off the main road and went to the small village of Jalil, where we stopped at the store to ask for directions. Someone offered to take us to someone's house who we could ask for permission to enter the forest. We went to one house, but the man there sent us to someone else with more authority. At the second house, Gabriela found a Electrodyla near the car. The man wasn't there, so we drove back to the store to get Ernesto, who had stayed there since there wasn't room in the car. When we reached the town again Ernesto was there with an angry crowd of local people who blocked the road. Our "guide"s father thought we had