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Published: October 4th 2012
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I get the bus for Guatemala at 7.30 in the morning – I sit up front again with the driver who has a spiv's moustache and is wearing a pin stripe trilby for some reason. At first I am squashed between him and his teenage son but at the breakfast break I insist on swapping – I have after all – paid for my ticket.
I have been warned about the perils of Guatemala, how dangerous it is for tourists.
I get talking to Violetta – a sixty year old Mexican who is visitng her friend in Lake Aititlan in Guatemala (where I am headed – the highlands of Guatemala...)
"Dominique" – shey says..."you can do anything you want."
Then she tells me about her various jobs form university, working as a legs model, doing rich students homework for them. She tells me about a village the other side of the lake called San Marco. Whereas Panachel (the main port on the Lake) and San Pedro are lively little villages well equipped for gringos – San Marco is the relaxing hippy village- full of saunas, yoga classes and spa treatments. It sounds right up my street!
I meet a bubbly North Londoner called Naz Khakoo. I think "one day i must hold a party and introduce Sarah to Naz - just so that i can say - Khakoo meet Kounnou, Kounnou meet Khakoo..."
She has cropped hair, big bright eyes and enthusiasm by the bucketload. Another former Marketing Manager who has given up the day jo to retrain as a yoga teacher in Hridaya yoga – she has just finished a teacher training course at Mantzume on coast of Mexico in Oaxaca and is going to stay with her friend who has just set up a yoga hostel on San Marco.
It is a sign - San Marco it is. By the time we arrive in Panachel it is dark – we have been travelling all day. Violetta takes charge of the group, myself, Naz and a lovely Swedish blonde with a goofy pretty face called Maria – and negotiates us a speedboat to San Marco. The sky is thick with the onset of night and clouds, as the speed boat takes off across the lake, a few more Guatemalan locals in long skirst and shawls jump on and pull up the canvases over
themselves giggling. It starts to rain huge heavy drops, thunder and lightenng electrify the purple sky and light up the clouds an eery eggshell. And that is how we arrive into San Marco on Lake Aititlan - by speed boat in the thick of night in the middle of a crashing thunderstorm.
Maria and I share a room in the yoga hostel situated high in the hills. The next morning we join Naz on her balcony and get our first glimpse of the glorious view overlooking Lake Aititlan. We join her for an hour of meditation and then an hour of yoga. Hijanu – who owns the hostel, talks about the chakras, and their link to creativity and communication. Naz practises what she's learnt at Yoga school by teaching us three ways of meditation - focusing on the "sared heart" to the right of our actual heart in the centre of our chest; by focusing on the pause at the end of an exhalation and the top of an inhalation and by counting up in rounds of seven.
Later on I pull on leggings and decide to chill out in one of the hammocks. I've been settled approximately
3 seconds before a mosquito decides to bite me through the arse of my leggings. Bastards. The next morning in yoga I feel myself being eaten alive again, I can't stay up in the hills. Its too jungly for my delicate skin and tasty blood.
The most expensive place to stay is right on the banks of the lake where the speed boat picks up and drops off. Here there is a little posada with rooms decorated in fresh linen and wooden furniture and a bathroom with a shower with hot water. Its ten pounds a night. I move in with my apolgies to Naz and Hijanu, and then take a breakfast of fresh pancakes and a pineapple juice overlooking the sunlit lake. Its time for another
“God I love my life...”
Later I book myself an hour and half long massage with a Chilean witch called Tatiana. She meets me at the posada and we walk to her studio. Although she speaks no english we communicate easily enough in Spanish...I show her my insect bites – picaturas – and she mixes an oil to massage with that stops them biting me. Her studio is cool and
up in the trees, dotted around are crystals and aromatherapy oils and feathers and sage for smudging. She has a large dark kitchen with a wood burning stove and makes me a large cup of ginger tea before walking me back home. Later I join Naz and co for a dinner of poppadums and indian - we are joined by Gloria – a puerto rican with a helium voice.
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