to the lake we go

in #travel8 years ago

After our first couple days in Antigua we made for Lake Atitlan,Guatemala. It is a 3 hour minibus ride from Antigua to San Pedro La Laguna which was our first stop, and what an exciting 3 hours it was. About halfway through our ride we encountered the Guatemalan National Police for the first time. They were doing a checkstop in the highlands on the road from Antigua. At first the stop seemed fairly normal, but after a bit something began to seem off. The driver had gotten out and chatted with the cop and seemed flustered, when he got back into the vehicle the old guy sitting in front of us asked the driver how much in Spanish. The driver replied with Q50 and the old white guy handed him a Q50 note. The driver handed over some papers to the cop with the Q50 note on top, and we were on our way. The old guy, we will just call him Georgia (where he’s from) turned around and said “Welcome to Guatemala!”

Georgia explained to us that this happens fairly often, and that the cops usually go to the back of the tourist minibuses as there is no window to see in. Ours had a window so they just blatantly did it in the open. He then told us all about his life, and where he had travelled and lived. It turns out that he started the Lake Atitlan magazine ten years before, which ended up being a pretty good resource for us to use in San Pedro. After a little while, we realized (Amber-Leigh noticed way earlier than I) that he was drinking straight ron (rum) out of a plastic cup. Georgia only got weirder from this point on, as we ran into him a lot while in San Pedro. The best way to describe him is that he is the eccentric old coutt expat who lives in town.

When we saw the road leading into San Pedro, it really doesn’t surprise us that he was drinking. You come down out of the highlands on the backside of a volcano that makes the switchbacks heading out of Osoyoos (British Columbia, Canada) east look like a kitten playing with yarn. Talking to someone later, they said if you are riding on a chicken bus down the hill the driver pulls and Austin Powers and does a 5 point turn to make one of the corners. You probably descend about a kilometre of altitude on these switchbacks, and it is a pretty crazy experience.

All this leads to arriving in San Pedro! A hillside town on Lake Atitlan.

We were originally going to stay at one hostel called Zoola, but after checking into the room there and a short walk down the path we realized we make an awful mistake and switched! We ended up at a decent place called Pinocchio’s that had an awesome rooftop terrace.

The one day from up here, we looked behind to the rest of town and saw all these little kites in the sky. They looked like little dragonflies speckling the sky. At first there were a couple and after about an hour there were probably close to 50, which was really neat to see!

After our short stay at Pinocchio’s we started our Spanish School, San Pedro Spanish School, for the week and did a homestay with a local family. The local family barely spoke any English, but were both teachers before they retired so they went fairly slow for us. Tula and Fransisco were lovely people with a beautiful home and a very successful family in town.

The Spanish School was good, but was a crazy amount of overload trying to learn as much as we possibly could in the time that we were there. The one awesome bonus was that the grounds of the School were beautiful and there were tons of butterflies hanging around distracting us from studying!

Although the town of San Pedro is on a beautiful lake, it ends up being the dumping ground for the rest of the lake, as the wind blows all the garbage and algae and not fun smelling things into the waters around town. That makes it not the most fun place to go swimming or to be really close to.

The other thing about San Pedro is that it has a strange feel to it. There is a ton of touristy stuff in town, but it is also a fairly large mayan pueblo (town) so it feels as though there is a ton of tension between the locals and the expats/tourists. We had an interesting perspective staying with a local family and walking through town everyday and seeing both sides of this. We quite enjoyed the mayan pueblo, and were quite happy to be out of the touristy part of town for our Spanish School experience. When we got the next town, our host had asked us if we were there for Spanish School or the party, as apparently it is known throughout Guatemala for its party scene.

The other awesome part of our homestay experience was the food. Or house mother was an incredible cook, and the portions were out of control large. We joked that Tula was trying to making us gordo (fat), but it was true. We ate the best fried rice and pancakes, but she also made us some amazing traditional Guatemalan dishes, and bring on the muy piquante (hot) salsa. Traditionally, tortillas are served with every meal (even the fried rice). We learned most people will buy tortillas from the market, but not Tula. She made them fresh for every meal.

Love always,
AL + Ian

Other highlights:

Hostel FE Bar and Restaurant
Friday night is Trivia Night where a team of five can win between Q500 ($85)-Q1000 ($175), and drink are Q10 ($2). The pot goes up when you get the host drunk, or call him out when he’s wrong or being silly, which Ian is very good at.

Women’s Cooperative, San Pedro La Laguna
Women’s weaving co-operative which is well-known for making traditional garmets using natural dyes and organic cotton. Each piece has a tag with information; one side is the bio of the woman who made it, and the back is the description of what cottons and dyes were used. A quarter of the cost goes back to support the co-operative, and the balance goes to the woman who made the lovely piece.

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Instagram (Amber-Leigh): lovealwaysal
Instagram (Ian): ircoopy

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Hello, lovealwaysal great post The last picture really attract me a lot.
I am sending this post to curie. if they selected your post you will get lots of upvotes and money too.
Good luck and keep posting.

Sorry about the late reply! Internet can be spotty down in Central America.
Thank you for sending our post onto @curie - maybe you can let us know about how it works!

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