07.06.10
A few hours of curvacious roads eventually led us to the tucked away town of San Marcos along beautiful Lake Atitlan. We arrived with John and Ameris, an American couple we’d met in Antigua. The search for a hotel was easy as there were few options to begin with.
A super chill Canadian dude and an incredibly friendly local run the hostal Paco Real, currently under renovations after the previous owner’s son trashed the place by turning it into drug and party pad for him and his friends. Thankfully “under renovation” means a great deal on beautiful new rooms!
Our tum tum’s a grumblin’ he suggested a place run by American ex-pats called Ganesh. The place is exactly as it sounds; hippie as all hell, but damn do they make a killer BLT.
During the dry season, the large lake is a crystal clear, baby blue, surrounded by volcanoes, some active, with tiny cities of local Mayan people tucked away in the valleys. Now, in the rainy season, all is true except the “crystal clear” and “baby blue,” now, more of a choppy, dark blue, but still gorgeous!
Each town has its own distinct flavor, and the primary mode of transport are boats that circle the whole lake, picking up locals and tourists alike. With the water, and the surrounding hills as barriers, each town has the feel of beings its own island.
San Marcos “island” is considered the most chilled-out, so we decided to see what it felt like on the party “island;” San Pedro.
A good deal more concrete than our humble town, San Pedro still has that laid back island feel. We wandered a bit to check things out; found a nice high church to climb for a view of the city and eventually headed back.
We explored our town a bit more, getting to see the locals in bright colors after a church ceremony that left the stone building smelling like delicious sage and spiced incense.
We later learned to loathe these church ceremonies as they were followed by hymns blasted over loudspeakers reminiscent of a 6 year old suffering from laryngitis performing karaoke through a machine with beats as complex as an old 8-bit Nintendo game. Never have we disliked religion more than right now…
The night ended with the four of us relaxing (suffering) in the roasting heat of the hostels Mayan sweat lodge (stone oven). Seriously, it is a big half sphere, made of stone, with a fire placed under with the intention of cooking humans. All the shaman sweat lodge stuff has to be made up just to cook white people. Jessica and the others loved it and to a certain temperature it feels kind of good, but man that shit gets HOT!
I left as my skin began to roast, and my lungs turned to goo, while Jessica could only comment that it didn’t quite get hot enough. She never gets ill, she can withstand extreme temperatures, and she actually laughs when seriously injured…sometimes I swear Jessica is a cyborg.
07.07.10
Somehow I was the only one who woke up in the middle of the night to the earthquake. An event even more commonplace here than even California.
In the morning our American friends left to attend to some work needing done and Jess and I decided to explore all the towns around the lake.
First up was San Juan, the “artsy island.” Beautiful murals decorated the city walls depicting modern events and Mayan tradition, as well as this one depicting a mudslide that killed a bunch of people.
A number of womans weaving collectives dot the town where Jessica bought a couple gorgeous, hand woven, naturally dyed scarves; as always to regret later not buying more!
At one of the shops they sold locally grown, handmade, fancy wrapped bars of chocolate for a buck. Mayan chocolate is unlike anything I have eaten before. There is slightly more bitterness without the overwhelming sweet, yet not as strong as a dark European or American chocolate. This one in particular was made with cardamom. If they wouldn’t melt so damn fast I would take home a thousand (and also be a thousand dollars poorer, and a thousand pounds fatter).
We rode the boat to the other side of the lake, enjoying the little villages it stopped off along the way to load and unload people and goods. The locals of each town have their own unique way of dress, wearing beautifully colorful clothing.
Enjoying the lovely cool weather and phenomenal scenery we eventually found our way to the more developed town of Panajachel. This town was filled with more resorts than the others, and is where locals from all the towns sold their goods along the street, half genuine, half made in china.
We wandered and made a couple small purchases, then sat and drank the best cup of coffee I have ever tasted. The coffee was so good we asked the cafe owner what brand it was. Don Maco, and we convinced them to sell us some of their bags since the only real place to get it is in Guatemala city!
We took the equally gorgeous ride back home, then headed to Ganesh’s to eat some astounding chili prepared by two English ex-patriots. We made quick friends with two great Israeli guys, chatted about travel and went to bed.
07.08.10
Bags strapped to our backs we boarded the first boat of the day to Panajachel to catch a bus to Chichicastenango. The early morning ride was spectacular with calm waters and each town draped in mist.
Our bodies jerked left and right along the twisting road towards Chichi. Finally we arrived feeling like we’d just been through and automatic meat tenderizer. A short walk up the street and we got to our cute hostel Posado Belen in a small room overlooking the city.
Our hotel has two views of completely different parts of the city on either side. On one side the city looks very reminiscent of a typical Indian mountain town; big concrete slab buildings of all different sizes mashed together haphazardly.
On the other side is a beautiful country town with quaint little homes along a lush green hill.
Odd.
Chichi is known for its massive Thursday and Sunday markets where locals meet from all the surrounding countryside to exchange goods and congregate for both Mayan spiritualist and catholic ceremonies. In recent years it has become two distinct markets, one for the locals, and one for the tourists; we came for both.
The first stop was the main Catholic church which marks the center of the markets where locals pray to their middle eastern, Jewish deity (who manages to always look white anyway) using more customary Mayan traditions.
The entirety of the day was spent wandering the markets, sampling local foods (delicious grilled corn, guacamole fritatas, and local chocolate drinks), buying some neat souvenirs, and taking pictures of all the craziness!
07.09.10
The city was small enough to see in a day. So we strapped on those bags again and headed very early to an arbitrary corner along the main road to catch a bus to our new destination of Quetzaltenango (Xela).
Yesterdays minivan was bad enough on all the curves, but today we got thrown into one of the ultra cheap steel coffins the locals speed around in. By the end of the ride, the only thing cushioning our bruises in this behemoth bus were the masses of people stacked on top of us. We didn’t even have room to move and take a picture so just use your imagination.
Picture – Imagination
We arrived at the bus terminal choking on black diesel gas, and quickly grabbed a taxi to high tail it to the city center. Our Couchsurfing host Phil was not expecting us so early, and we weren’t expecting to stay in a cramped, messy room behind his cafe. We’ve stayed in worse, but not usually while couchsurfing! (So often in our travels has the free choice been 10x nicer than the cheap choice!).
Phil seemed nice enough as we chatted about Couchsurfing and travel over some breakfast from their Cafe cooked by his Guatemalan girlfriend Edith. Afterwards we walked to the nearby cemetery to talk some more and wander the eerie pathways.
Phil left and Jessica and I crept through the crumbling crypts snapping shots of the final testaments to buried corpses.
After the graveyard we headed to the city center where we found that there is much less to do in town than we thought. The hot springs we were so excited about had been washed away in the last tropical storm, and the mornings were often too foggy to hike to a vista point and see the active volcano poop ash. So we booked tickets to our next destination early, and headed out to explore the town for the day.
The city center is beautiful, and the people are very friendly. It is very much a town where the people have a sense of community.
Next stop was one of the more odd museums we have seen since the National Museum in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. The first series of rooms in Xela’s museum were dedicated to some old war we still can’t figure out. It also contained a bunch of old machines from the 1900′s.
The second section of the museum however is where things turned truly odd. One massive room was dedicated to descriptions and practical uses of a variety of chemicals and minerals, but the next room blew our minds.
The room was seemingly dedicated to the practice of amateur taxidermy and animal fetuses in jars. It was a massive room, and the most prominent fetuses were those containing multiple heads (pig and cow) and multiple arms (goat). A massive cage dominates the center filled with two huge stuffed toys of lions, and in the corner are completely fake stuffed sea creatures that look strikingly like something that would exist on Pandora from Avatar! Probably for good reason, pictures were not allowed, but that didn’t stop us from snapping a few as the ancient guard slept over his desk.
After bizzaro land we wandered around the local market area; always a fun place to get to know what locals are really like, and snap some excellent shots.
The rest of the day was uneventful aside from a ton of rain, a pretty decent traditional Guatemalan meal at a fancy restaurant, and some beers while chatting with Phil at the hostel he works at.
Recent Comments