Lake Atitlan is renowned as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." It is surrounded by volcanoes on all sides and has a scattering of Mayan villages on its borders. During the Guatemalan civil war, the lake was the scene of many terrible human rights abuses, as the government pursued a scorched earth policy. Indigenous people were assumed to be universally supporters of the guerrillas who were fighting against the government, and were targeted for brutal reprisals. First trivia that I picked up from a threesome of older American hippies waiting for the small
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