Lake Atitlan

After our stay at the coffee farm and a bit more time in Xela, we hopped on yet another chicken bus and made our way to Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is an incredibly beautiful, quite large lake surrounded by volcanoes. It is gorgeous and is one of Guatemala's prime tourist attractions. Unfortunately, due to pollution, there was a recent cyanobacteria bloom that covered 40% of the lake in a brown and green toxic goo. The lake had been generally fine before, but one city on the lake had its sewage treatment plant blown out in their last hurricane and they could not afford to repair it so the city dumped the sewage in the lake. It is a shame. It is going to take years for it to recover.

People had told us not to go to the lake, that we would get rashes from the water and that it smelled bad. I had been pretty excited to see this place so we went anyway, undeterred. I am super glad we did! With the "cooler" weather (80s), the bacteria had sunk into the lake and it looked pretty clean when we arrived. We decided we wouldn't want to swim in it or anything but it was a pretty sparkly blue when we got there. The scenery was unbeatable!

Our trusty chicken bus dropped us at a larger lakeside city and we took a boat over to our destination city: San Pedro La Laguna. Here I am ready to board our craft and cross the mildly toxic waters.

Below is the approach to San Pedro La Laguna.

At the docks, we were approached by a man who told us he would show us a room with a private bath for 30 Quetzales per person per night ($3.75). We followed him to "Casa Rolando". It was nice enough but what really sold us were the lake views. Tim couldn't get into the hammock fast enough!

We will always remember "Casa Rolando" because after settling into our room, we were approached by a man with a fine mustache who said "Hola. Soy Rolando y estan en casa Rolando." ("Hi. I am Rolando and you are in Casa Rolando.") Maybe you had to be there but it was pretty funny the way he said it so matter of factly. Anyway, we had a nice night's rest in Casa Rolando and the next morning, we took a little walk around the town. They have a combination of paved roads and dirt walking paths around San Pedro so it makes for fun exploring!

People grow small crops of coffee and corn on the lake's edge. They had a central coffee processing station and we walked by coffee drying on the side of the roads. We felt so well educated from our coffee tour!

Total Random Aside: You may be wondering how we are getting in the Christmas spirit in a much warmer, less snowy climate than usual. Well, wonder no more! Poinsettias grow naturally in Mexico and Central America! (maybe elsewhere too, but we've only made it as far as Nicaragua so far)

And people decorate for Christmas!

We went kayaking one morning and even though water splashed on my legs, I did NOT get a rash. Whoo! What a relief!

There were many fine restaurants in San Pedro and we enjoyed them fully! This place also showed movies for free in the evenings. It was a fun way to pass the evenings.

Yummy chocolate crepes!

We ended up going to the same place for breakfast almost every day. I know that's not very adventurous of us but the next couple of photos illustrate why Nick's was the place for us (English name but locally owned - we asked before eating there):

#1 This was the view from the restaurant's dining deck.

#2 This breakfast cost us $2.50. There's a pancake under all that fruit and yogurt! The scrambled eggs were delectable!

One thing about San Pedro is that lots of tourists flock to it because it is a pretty nice place to visit. In turn, the local economy depends on tourists to make a living. Because of the bad publicity the lake received with their little bacteria problem, many people were staying away from Lake Atitlan. One man told me it was down 40%. Because there were so few tourists, we got to know some of the sellers who made their way through the restaurants. We bought woven bracelets from this girl.

Below is our friend, Jose. We met him on the first day we arrived when he offered to sell us banana bread. We weren't interested at the time but he introduced himself, asked our names and made us promise we would only buy bread from him. We saw him daily. He would come to our table, sit down and start chatting away before casually slipping in that he had bread for sale. At one restaurant, he informed us the next day was his 10th birthday. Whether that was true or just a way to get the gringos to buy bread from him, we will never know. We didn't care. The bread was delicious! We got to know him pretty well over the days. Sometimes we shared our breakfast with him. He once hinted that he wanted us to buy him a lemonade by telling us he had never tried it before. He is a bright little kid and born salesman and we were concerned that he was out working and not in school but we later learned from someone in the community that he does attend school. They just have a break in November and December and he earns extra money for his family during that time.

We did leave San Pedro for one night in order to check out another town on the lake and to do yoga. It was nice but we were pulled back to San Pedro. We decided to check out a different hostel this time. Casa Rolando was great and all but we wanted to be on the water. Here's what we got at Villa del Lago, our "new" hostel:

Our room is on the far right

We had unobstructed views of the lake and village life that centers on the water. The women wash their clothes in the lake. It's not good for the lake's health (or their's to be standing in it for hours on end, beating their clothes against the rocks) but they have few other options.

Children also enjoyed swimming and bathing there in the afternoons.

I enjoyed reading by the water's edge.

On one of our last evenings, we treated ourselves to a bottle of wine.

Also, since we didn't want to swim in the lake, we spent an afternoon at the pool. It was fantastic!

Lake Atitlan was a very special, beautiful place. We would highly recommend that you go check it out, even with the water quality issue. There are amazing views, gracious people, guided hikes and horseback riding, yoga, massage, kayaking and boat tours of the whole lake. It's a bit of Guatemalan paradise and I'm glad we didn't listen to those telling us not to bother.