San Marcos

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After a gruelling morning lying by the pool at the gorgeous Hotel Atitlan, Lucy and I took one of the ¨lanchas¨, a little fibreglass boat, over the lake to San Marcos. The trip over allowed us excellent views of a number of other little villages at the lake edge, all small sleepy villages, some with surprisingly large and lovely houses built into the hillsides. I suspect mostly owned by holidaying Americans. Lucy befriended one such lady on the boat, who told her that on various spots on the lake there are some huge mansions. One of which is apparently owned by the man who owns all the department stores in Guatemala City. He choppers down to the lake, but interestingly is also required to chopper to work in Guat. City, as he has so much money that if he were to drive on the road he would be kidnapped for ransom. So there is definitely some wealth here, but from what I can see it isn´t terribly well distributed.

The poverty means that we are very careful about security, which we have been warned about multiple times. For example, although we are on this picturesque lake, where the villages are connected by a series of paths, we haven´t taken ourselves off hike to another village yet. Instead we will find a guide who can take us, and make sure we don´t have too much money with us. We were also careful not to walk back to the Hotel in Pana after dark, taking tuktuks instead (although these were quite an adventure!). You also notice that all the banks are heavily armed with at least two guards sporting sawn-off shotguns. In fact any building of any importance seems to have an armed guard, although there aren´t many important buildings. Yesterday however, I did notice that the truck carrying Gallo, a local beer, had an armed guard on the back! You also see barbed-wire around the perimeters of some of the houses and the upmarket hotels, in fact at Hotel Atitlan I noticed guards patrolling the gardens.

However now we are in the cute little village of San Marcos, and although not a prosperous town the mainly indigenous people are very friendly. It is filled with gringos, as it is a very popular place to come for retreats, meditation, yoga etc. So lots of hippy gringos! Our hotel is called the Hotel Jinava, and although very simple and rustic, it is gorgeous. It is slightly separate from the rest of the town and has its own little jetty, which Lucy and I were grateful for, as it´s a very steep hill between us and the main town. The hotel has a small number of separate little rooms (casitas), all smartly whitewashed, surrrounded by a divine garden, on a precipitously steep hillside. The rooms are all connected by little cobbled steps. It is really cute, and it is nice to be slightly separate from the rest of the town. We have rooms for three nights, although ideally want to stay for four. We´ve got somewhere else booked for the final night if we need to. It´s the kind of place where it is easy to just chill out and not do very much. This morning Jack and Lucy took a boat over to San Pedro, while I went down to the jetty and read my book in the sun. I had the place to myself, so could alternatively read a few pages, watch the local fishermen in their kayaks, or just admire the view.

Not surprisingly there has been lots of opportunity to practice my Spanish. However I am still a long way off being a Spanish speaker! So starting today, I´ve booked myself in for three days of lessons, five hours each day. I will be the only person in the class, so I will be exhausted at the end of it. I felt drained after yesterday´s fifteen minute conversation when I arranged it - I can´t imagine how I will feel at the end of the class! However it will be worth it. The better your Spanish is the more you will get out of your travels here I think.

The main attraction here however isn´t the Spanish school, but yoga, meditation, retreats etc, which I mentioned earlier. The good news is that I´ve also seen numerous places advertising massages, so before tomorrow´s class, that will be my little treat. And if it goes well, then there´s time for another treat the day after!

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Photos

Volcan San Pedro
This time it was us who enjoyed the view, this time of Volcan San Pedro. This is the view from our verandah.

Jetty
One morning before Spanish class I went to the hotel jetty and just read for a while. Not a bad spot to watch the world go by.

Better in person
This is a gorgeous view of two volcanos side by side - but it really doesn't do it justice.