San Pedro la Laguna - Lago Atitlan

In an attempt to keep my blog in chronological order, I'm posting this update about the lake (several weeks) late, but am retroactively dating it so it appears before the more recent stuff I've been up to.

View of San Pedro la Laguna from the lake surface of Lago Atitlan (Lake Atitlan)

While up at the mountain school I made friends with James (hai-may if you want to pronounce it in spanish) who was one of the "chaperones" for the Colorado school group trip. I put chaperone in quotes because James is a 19 year old college sophomore who is long-time family friends with one of the other chaperones of the trip, Chris, the mom of one of the students actually on the trip and to her younger son who also came along. Chris basically recruited family friends to help her chaperone the trip as an excellent excuse to go to Guatemala. They all had a great time and I know their students learned a lot. The rest of the group, minus James, only stayed 2 weeks, but James planned an additional four weeks or so since he had the time off from school. I also spent time hanging out with Troy up at the mountain school, as previously mentioned, although we had initially met at PLQ three weeks prior. Troy, it turns out, is also from Colorado although totally un-connected with the school trip.

Anywhoodle, while up at the mountain school the boys had talked about a Lago Atitlan trip the following weekend and invited me along. I had been wanting to check out the lake as I had heard that it's one of the most beautiful places in Guatemala, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Except for one small hitch: James is 19 and Troy is 20 and they both possess Y chromosomes. This is simply to say that their frontal cortex and executive functioning abilities aren't totally finished developing yet. The initial plan went like this: Troy wanted to know what the Saturday trip at PLQ was before committing to the lake. He would check out the schedule on Monday and call James with a yea or nay. If it was a yea, James would come to Xela either Friday night or Saturday morning and then we'd all take off for the lake on Saturday.

What actually happened was this: We listened to the schedule on Monday, the Saturday trip was one Troy had already done. He procrastinated on calling James and instead wound up making plans with his ladyfriend back in Colomba to go to the beach for the weekend (which he didn't mention until Wednesday). It was Thursday when Troy finally confirmed that he was going to the beach for the weekend instead of the lake, and that he still hadn't called James. So I called James and asked if he still wanted to go to the lake and then did the legwork to get us a place to stay and investigated the bus situation. I told James I'd meet him at the bus terminal in Xela Saturday morning, and we could catch the next bus to San Pedro la Laguna. BTW: made all of our reservations in Spanish :)

Lago Atitlan is a lake ringed in mountains and volcanoes approximately 3 hours southeast (I think) from Xela by bus (if you catch the direct bus to San Pedro la Laguna. If you don't, you have to make a connection somewhere and it takes longer. Also, if you catch the wrong bus to plain old San Pedro, you'll end up in another town with the same name but in the opposite direction. I'm told it's less fun).

The lake really is a gem as far as natural beauty goes. The bus takes you over the mountains which, for us, were clouded in and rainy. Once you get to the other side though you start your descent on a series of switch backs down the steep mountainside to the lake. At points you get an incredible vista of this large body of water nestled in amongst lush green mountains. It doesn't have the wow factor of Crater Lake's color, but it definitely has the wow factor of being hidden in a crater-like fashion. There's just this feeling of: wow, this place actually exists. I never would have guessed that on the other side of those mountains.

Clouds coming over the mountains ringing Lago Atitlan; taken from the surface of the lake

Because of this wow factor, the towns around the lake are popular tourist destinations, and San Pedro is one of the main draws. I had discovered a Guatemalan tour book someone had left behind in my bedroom in my new family's house and had used it to help plan our weekend. The book mentioned that local kids often meet the chicken buses and offer to help show extranjeros to a hotel in hopes of earning a few quetzales. This is exactly what happened. I had chosen our hotel for the reviews I found online and because it boasted a hot tub on the roof. It turned out to be right down on the main drag by the water, across the street from a number of restaurants. It also turned out that the hot tub was out of commission.

Our two young guides walked us down the steep hillside to our hotel, Hotel Mansion del Lago. We found our way across the courtyard to the office, and I mentioned our reservation. The woman took us up a level and showed us three options for rooms - all with single full-sized beds. "Umm...cuando yo llame, yo pide por dos camas separados" I awkwardly explained to her (when I called, I asked for two separate beds). This didn't phase her. Up another level and she opened the door to a room with two separate twins, and a private bathroom. Perfecto! By this point it was around 3 in the afternoon and both James and I were famished.

We dropped our bags (I had felt all clever having gone to Trauma, one of the fair-trade weaving cooperatives in Xela, before our trip and bought a nice sized over the shoulder beachy-like bag that could serve for weekend excursions. Bonus: I now had a way to transport gifts and other purchases back home) and headed across the street to the first restaurant we saw, Cafe Alegre. En route (literally, crossing the street) we were approached by a couple of guys in khaki vests reminiscent of safari guides. They talked in Spanglish with offers of "want to rent kayaks? horse-bak-riding? Volcano hike?" There are a number of tour operations in San Pedro offering to hook you up with just about any recreation activity you can think of. We waved them off and continued our quest for a meal, climbing the steps to the second-floor cafe.

Lunch was a bit of a culture shock. The bartender greeted us in English with a New Zealand accent. The menu was in English. In fact, there wasn't a single conversation being held in Spanish in the entire bar. American music blared, and the TV was tuned in to NBC's coverage of the US Olympic qualifying trials for diving, to be followed by coverage of the track and field qualifiers. James and I blinked, gaped, and shook our heads a bit - we'd forgotten that it was an Olympics year. We'd also kind of forgotten how to eat non-guatemalan food: James ordered a quesadilla as a tex-mex compromise.

Lunch was good, but our brains started to explode with so much assaulting English stimuli after 40 minutes or so. We headed out as soon as we were done eating. It had started to rain, as it usually does in the afternoon in the highlands region of Guatemala, but we wanted to see some of the town so we opted to ignore it. Our hotel sat on a corner directly across from the cafe/bar we had lunch at. The street that ran along the other side of the bar led the way down to one of two docks in San Pedro. There you can catch boats to any of the other towns on the lake. It's less than a block from the corner to the dock so we shortly returned and turned down the other street that makes up the corner with our hotel. There was a dessert/coffee cafe, a couple of internet cafes, and various shops selling jewelry and other items. We found one store that specialized in shoes and sandals made from traditional Guatemalan fabrics.

Further down there were street vendors selling more jewelry, much of which they made themselves. James marveled at our discovery of "Guatemalan Hippies" since the artists were mostly young folks our age, with dreads and piercings and tattoos. Plop them on the streets of almost any major American city (well, on the West Coast anyway) and they'd blend right in. San Pedro and a few of the other lake towns are known for being the free-thinker, ex-pat hippy centers of Guatemala. Our guide book said: "More than anywhere else in Guatemala, San Pedro has a distinctive bohemian feel, and there's plenty of bongo-bashing and bong-smoking counterculture in evidence. Yet despite the obvious culture clash between locals (most of whom are evangelical Christians) and travelers, everyone seems to get on reasonably well." I felt like that was a pretty accurate description, although they left out the Jewish Chabad House and what appeared to be a fairly active Jewish community (or at least an active Jewish travel community).

We continued our wandering down towards the end of the road, passing some other hotels and a laundromat with a giant sign out front advertising their services in English. "Your clothes will look clean and smell good." If I'd had laundry to do, that's where I would have gone. As we were coming to the end of the road we passed a tuk-tuk taxi driver who wished us a good afternoon, offered us a ride, and asked if we wanted any weed. We just about kinked our necks whipping our heads around to see if he'd really said what we thought we'd heard. Before our trek I had talked with some other folks at school, an austrailian couple, who had been to San Pedro the previous week and they emphasized this laizez-faire environment "They will literally offer you everything and anything, just walk down the street." The next day as I was looking at more of the street venders' jewelry they inquired if I would be interested in any number of illicit mind altering substances. "Ganja? Mushrooms? Coke? Acid? Want to see a menu?" You have a menu??? I thought, as I politely declined.

We finally gave in to the tour operators and rented kayaks for a few hours to paddle across the little arm of the lake that we were situated on. The views from the water were gorgeous. We went in search of a diving spot across the lake near San Martin (I think) but didn't find it before the weather changed on us. We kept watching the clouds coming over the mountain peaks, and saw the rain clouds gathering, but they moved much faster than we had anticipated. Even though we started for shore in what we thought was well ahead of the weather, we got caught in the rain and wind about halfway across. It made for a very wet rest of the kayak trip.

The color of the water changes from slate gray/blue to green throughout the day depending on the light and clouds. This is a view of the other shore we kayaked to. You can't see it, but there's a road that runs along the edge of the lake on the mountain which is the road we took in and out of town.

Another view of San Pedro from the other side of the lake

We also spent time wandering around different parts of town. In he main night-life extranjero section of town, the streets are like little mazes in between the buildings, which looked pretty cool. The main square/church courtyard which also serves kind of as the bus terminal is gorgeous too with grass and flower beds and a giant, colorful statue of San Pedro (Saint Peter).

The church at San Pedro

We were waiting for our bus underneath this arbor, watching people wander through the church courtyard. It was summer vacation week for the schools in Guatemala and we saw a lot of families here enjoying their vacation.

The brightly colored building next to the square added a really nice contrast to the bright white of the church. We watched a crew of window washers tackle all of the windows on this building in about 20 minutes. No ladders needed, they just climbed out the upstairs windows to stand in the planters.

The brightly painted statue of San Pedro (Saint Peter I'm assuming because he's holding keys in one hand and a ledger in the other)

Another gorgeous Guatemalan flower :)

So, the verdict is San Pedro la Laguna is a great little hippy town to visit, and the lake is gorgeous and relaxing. I definitely recommend a trip and, if I had the chance to go back, I'd love to visit some of the other towns around the lake.