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Published: November 23rd 2005
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Hola!
Right now I am at what is said to be the most beautiful lake in the world, lago de atitlan. It is a huge body of water surrounded by volcanoes and many small villages that you can take boats to and visit or stay for the night. When I first arrived here I went to the village Santa Cruz La Laguna. It is a very tiny village, and most of the people don´t actually speak spanish, they speak in their mayan village language, I forget the name of it. Anyways, while there I stayed at this place on the water called La Iguana Perdida (the lost iguana). It was a really nice place with great staff, and a great Saturday night party. Every Saturday night they host a cross dressing party where everyone staying there goes into the dressing room and finds an outfit they would like to wear for the evening. Around 5pm everyone must be in costume to receive the happy hour prices for drinks. Then at 7pm they have this huge all you can eat BBQ. I had the vegetarian option and it was definitely the best food I have eaten during my whole trip. Not to
say that the typical plantains, tortillas, beans, guacamole, eggs, etc. aren´t tasty, but you definitely get sick of eating that after a while and being a vegetarian I have been craving some hearty vegetable dishes. They don´t really eat a lot of vegetables or fruit here, just bread, bread and meat and more bread, oh and the black beans (frijoles). So I dressed up and joined the BBQ. After that there was live music and dancing. I only caught part of the live music as I was so tired and went to bed around 9:30pm. Early I know, but when you are travelling around all the time you get completely drained.
The next morning I left to another village called San Pedro La Laguna. This was a larger village, most of the people here spoke spanish and it was geared more towards tourists. There were lots of great restaurants with tons of veggie options because of that reason, and I also got to see some live music here. The band was called Lin Duet (even though there were three members) and they were actually quite good. It was just really mellow classical guitar type stuff, with a little bit of
drumming in the background. I also took my first swim in the lake here. I thought it would be a great idea to help fight the heat, so I walked down to this empty dock by the water and jumped in. Once I was in the water I noticed this black pipe leading down to where I was swimming and looked up to see that it was coming from the hotel right behind the dock. Then I looked around the shoreline a little more and noticed pipes coming down fom every building on the shore. Needless to say I jumped out right away! I was pretty much swimming amongst sewage, it was absolutely disgusting! I now know better to look a little closer at the conditions of the water here before I jump right in.
The next mornig I took another boat to Santiago Atitlan. This village was completely different than the others. This one was geared even more towards tourists and had tons of merchants selling handicrafts all the way up the street from the dock to the hotels. Here there was also a lot of begging, mostly from small children, but from older people as well. In all
of the other places I have visited here, begging didn´t seem to be such a problem, but there, there were so many. It is sad that there are so many homeless there, but it is also frustrating at the same time. You always had someone following you around and constantly asking for money or standing at your table the whole time you ate. I did a lot of shopping here and also went to visit this mayan god called maximon. He is a monkey statue that smokes and is located in one of the houses in the village. He is a bad god, loves to smoke and drink and get money, all that kind of stuff. What happens is locals will bring him some sort of offering like cigarettes, cigars, tequilla, rum, money, etc. and ask him to grant their wishes. They wish for things like a beautiful wife, or to become rich or to hurt any enemies they may have. It is quite a weird scene in there. I had to pay a few cents to get in and then they charged me like 0.75 cents to take a photo of it. It was a great experience though because
I actually got to watch as people passed through and worshiped him. I can´t believe they actually believe that he will help them...
This morning I left Santiago and I am now in Panajachel. This is the main city around the lake where you can take boats to any of the villages situated around the lake. I will be here for a couple of nights so that I can take a day trip to Chichicastenango tomorrow morning. Every Thursday and Sunday this town has what is known as the largest market in all of Guatemala.
Adios!
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Sarah
non-member comment
It looks fantastic
That lake sure does look beautiful!! Hope you're doing well! Big hugs, Sarah