Lake Atitlan

Ever since we started telling people that we were going to come to Guatemala, people who had been here before (i.e. Phil Holeman)kept telling us that while in the country we need to visit Lake Atitlan. The opportunity came, and so we took it. It really is a beautiful place, and I'll echo everyone else- if you ever come to Guatemala, visit Lake Atitlan.

We had a great time, although the trip didn't get off to the best of starts. We left after classes on Friday, and we took a tourism bus. The bus was late, I had to brush a previous passenger's snack crumbs off of my seat, and the driver had a terrible cough. Unfortunately we were sitting right behind him. (Kara is home sick today, and whether it's actually related to him or not, we're blaming the driver.) The bus was supposed to take us to our hotel, but when we arrived in the town of Panajachel, the driver stopped in front of his company's office and told us that we were on the main street-pictured left-, and dropped all of us off. It was a bit intimidating, since we had no idea where to go. But I figured downhill was toward water, so we walked downhill and fortunately came right to our hotel. (I could probably get hired for all sorts of adventurous jobs with that kind of outdoor skill.)

In addition, Friday was foggy/rainy, so when we walked down to the lake we couldn't tell what all the fuss about this place had been about- because all that we could see was water. And to top it all off, neither of us could sleep very well because our bed in the hotel consisted of a 4" mattress on top of solid wood.

Thankfully, Saturday and Sunday were different stories. The weather cleared up, and we could see why they advertise Atitlan as being one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. We took a boat tour (just the two of us for about $15), and got to see the lake and take a lot of pictures. If you'd like to see more of the pictures we took, click here.