Bad Vibes

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Lake Atitlan, once said to be the most beautiful lake on earth by Aldous Huxley, offers up an array of lake side town options which you can make your base. We opted for San Pedro as the main alternative San Marcos was billed as Hippie Ville. Rik the slightly Bohemian, and highly fascinating, Welsh potter we’d met a few days earlier whilst hiking up Volcano Pacaya had even given San Marcos a bad billing dismayingly telling us about the various places selling the opportunity to communicate with aliens via telepathy. Not having anything seriously against Gringo Hippies on tour (we’re sure they’re truly delightful folk) we decided it probably wasn’t our scene and so to refrain from San Marcos and also any related alien communications.

We found San Pedro had one major thing going for it. Very cheap accommodation. Our double with en-suite cost about £3.50. The very smiley Guatemalan lady who was managing the hotel was even very apologetic that our room didn’t have a balcony. However, the unfortunate thing about San Pedro was that cheap accommodation was about all that it did have going for it. The locals were friendly and the lake was indeed very pretty but there just wasn’t really anything to do there. Even walking in the hills was out as Guatemala’s rather unfortunate internal security issues in that region meant that it was simply too dangerous to go wandering. Going out for a drink was not a particularly great option either as the San Marcos vibe had seemingly spread over the lake. The Gringo Hippie crew were out in force and most of them where interested in substances more potent than the local rum.

After discovering the unfortunate realities of San Pedro we enjoyed a very nice few hours of kayaking on the lake and then got on to the nearest fast boat and left. Based on our Welsh potter friends advice we’ll now head further west to Quetzaltenango (otherwise know as Xela) for more active volcano hiking.

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