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Published: April 10th 2010
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We took a particularly bumpy and long chicken bus ride to San Pedro La Laguna, a village on the shore of Lake Atitlan. Aldous Huxley apparantly proclaimed that it is the most beautiful lake in the world, and in my experience to date I would agree with him.
Lake Atitlan is the largest lake in Central America and is around 340m deep with a surface area of 50 sq miles. It was formed by volcanic activity and is surrounded by three volcanoes, mountains, and small Mayan villages. The water is a crystal clear turquoise, warm, and edged with rocky volanic slopes, a few beaches, and reed beds that support various species of bird life.
We hired a canoe to explore the end of the lake close to San Pedro village, around the base of Volcan San Pedro and stopped at a deserted beach (well actually a couple of other people later arrived) and swam in the warm shallows, so clear that we could see the bottom. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the beach before paddling the hour journey back to the village. The canoe trip, swimming, and such spectacular surroundings, was a perfect experience - I really
recommend it.
We wanted to hike to one of the surrounding peaks to get a good view of the lake. The best choices from San Pedro was to either climb Indian Nose (a mountain funnily enough shaped like an Indian's nose) or Volcan San Pedro. We decided upon Indian Nose as it's position slightly away from the Western tip of the lake gives a really good view of the whole lake, its surrounding volcanoes, and all the volcanoes of Antigua in the distance. The lake gets very misty from mid morning on so the views aren't that great unless you go early. We therefore took our own guide as opposed to joining a tour so we could start at 3.30am to arrive at the summit for sunrise (yes we learnt from our previous mistake!). The sunrise and vista from the top were so spectacular that it was really worth the effort. We were the only ones at the summit, and we were back down by 9am - passing about three tour groups on the way up. We had breakfast, and then hired kayaks again - we had enjoyed it so much. I didn't enjoy the paddling quite so much
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The volcanoes surrounding the lake this time as I was pretty tired, but again the beach and the swimming were lovely.
We spent a total to three days in San Pedro, a place where many people stay for months. The village itself is kind of strange as it has a large ex-pat community who own and work in many European and American bars and restaurants. Occasionally it's nice to have a change from the local food, and we had a lovely french meal with Chilean wine in a picturesque, plant filled restaurant garden called Le Jardin. We had a night out with other travellers ending up in a Psy Trance bar (I was the only one who liked the music). Overall though, speaking english and being immersed in European culture isn't really why I wanted to travel so I was happy to leave after only a couple of days. I have since met other travellers who stayed in San Marcos, another quieter village further along the shore, who said it was much less touristy and more chilled. Maybe that would have been a better choice.
In the interests of convenience we ditched the chicken bus this time and took a direct shuttle bus
to Antigua....
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Alice
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I so look forward to your blogs Lukey, I love reading them! You should properly write about your travels, its so interesting and inspiring. Miss you xx