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Published: October 23rd 2007
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As we are nearing our big vacation to Australia/New Zealand, we wanted to take one last road trip before we leave. (In case this is the first time you've heard about this, we decided that, given the kids' "summer break" which lasts until January, we wanted to take a major vacation Down Under since neither we nor our kids will likely have so much free time available during the good travel season).
Anyhoo, we have been in Guatemala over 2 months and had yet to see one of the major travel destinations in this country: Lago de Atitlán, or Lake Atitlán. This lake is surrounded by 3 volcanoes and is itself a collapsed volcano. Even though it is formed differently, its dramatic beauty is simlar to Crater Lake in Oregon, although Atitlán is larger. It is over 1050 feet/320 meters deep and covers an area of 49.3 square miles.
So once again we hopped into our rented car, but having learned from last weekend, we actually packed useful clothing! As is typical, our hardest part of the trip was figuring out how to find the highway. In this case, CA-1, the Central American highway, which is smooth and wide
in some areas, and bumpy, rugged and two-laned in others. We went through a couple of "suburbs" on our way out of Antigua and were thrilled to find the highway right where the map said it should be. We headed west, going through such towns as Chimaltenango, Tecpán,and Sololá. While the towns were nothing to write home about, beauty-wise, the amazing patchwork of farms and mountain dales was incredible. (We drove by a Swiss restaurant, complete with chalet theme, on the mountain pass. Coincidence? Maybe not!) We were traveling at a fairly high elevation, maybe 6000 feet or more and then starting at Sololá we decended back down to "only" 5100 feet.
By the time we reached the lake area, we were hungry and ready for lunch. The main town here is Panajachel, or Pana for short. (Due to the large number of tourists, it's also nicknamed "Gringo-tenango", a play on words using the common ending of many towns here). We found another Dos Mundo hotel (the other is the one we stayed at last weekend in Monterrico) so we knew the food would be good. After lunch we found our lodging that Steve had booked,
Hotel Atitlán .
If
you ever have the chance to visit Lake Atitlán, make an effort to at least visit the gardens of this hotel! This is by far one of my favorite hotels I've ever visited, mostly because it's so aethetically beautiful. It sits on a former coffee plantation, and the owner, who inherited the coffee farm from her parents, built the hotel using excellent taste and colonial style. It overlooks the lake and has a lovely pool and patio surrounded by gorgeous Italian-style gardens. And the food is wonderful.
On Saturday morning we walked 200 yards up the lane from the hotel to the Reserva Natural Atitlán, which, in addition to spider monkeys, bridges over waterfalls, and a butterfly habitat, has ZIP-LINES. We started our zip-line adventure by getting outfitted in harness, carabiners and hard-hat (the latter being a slighly hilarious way to protect your hairdo in a fall while your internal organs would simply go SPLAT). The outfit, Cable X-Tremos, showed us how get on the line, and during a practice run, Steve snapped a picture of me with my 4'11" Mayan guide and just burst into laughter at the sight. "Are you two even of the same
species?" he asked (in English, so the guide didn't hear). He also laughed at the contrast from the zip-lines he took last year in Canada, with their double-cable systems with auto braking, with our single cables and low tech braking system (your gloved right hand).
There are 6 lines over the jungle, and when you're on the line you have this amazing feeling of flying over the jungle. I don't really know how high we were, but I'm guessing around 250 feet or so - definitely enough to give you the willlies if you stop to really ponder your precarious situation (which I highly discourage - no need for logic or the urge for self-preservation here).
I must say, it's quite something to watch your own child step off a cliff into the great abyss. Talk about a leap of faith! We got some great pictures of the kids on the line. We all really enjoyed the runs - two of which I didn't brake quite hard enough and was going too fast at the end of the line. At this point the secondary braking system deployed, which consisted of my guide stepping in front of me and letting
me slam into him.
The rest of the time at Atitlán was mostly swimming and relaxing in the sun. During one respite I took the opportunity to get my own Guatemalan massage, this time by a Brazilian woman named Helen, although I suspect her middle name was Mengele or de Sade or something. I have NEVER had such a massage as this - Steve's experience (see earlier blog) was informative, as the technique was deep ("profundo") and I also saw stars on several occasions. This gal, (or was she a woman,
really?), took my life into her hands, at one point very suddently torquing my neck so hard and quickly that I heard 3-4 sharp and oddily satisfying CRACKS. I had to quickly wiggle my toes and fingers to ensure she hadn't broken my neck and paralyzed me. She also rubbed me so hard in places I wasn't used to being rubbed (for example, my stomach) that I was on the edge of throwing up, and I had to tighten my stomach muscles in self-defense. This 2-hour massage became a titan struggle of wills, mine to stay on the table and enjoy the experience for which I was paying
"Are we even of the same species?"
Borrowing a line from West Wing, when 6-foot CJ Craig (Allison Janney) was joined in a hallway by 4'11" Annabeth Schott (Kristin Chenoweth) a crazy small sum, and hers to break my body down and bend it to her will.
She won. I lost all track of time, and was just living second by second, trying to keep from either yelling in pain or laughing at the absurdity. (At one point she cupped her hands and whacked my legs really hard, like a Brazilian bongo drummer, with the sound reaching up into the hills, I'm sure). I slowly got up and then hurried to pay her, in case she was going to try to finish me off while my guard was down. I ran back to our room to take a shower (as with Steve, a LOT of massage oil was used in very interesting places on my body, including deep inside my EARS) and immediately checked for welts. After relating my story to Steve, he says he can't wait to return and book his massage with Helen!
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