Up At The Lake

Panajachel is a major tourist town. It’s small main street is lined with tour operators, hotels, restaurants and bars of varying quality. Even more variable is the quality on offer from the dozens of ‘handicraft’ stalls and hawkers, which ranges from tourist tat to jade jewellery and genuinely unique art and handicrafts (direct from the factory). Some of which the hawkers will kindly offer to sell you at your table during breakfast, or even when you’re fully loaded with rucksack and bag and heading to the bus stop.

Panajachel is also famous for it’s glass bead jewellery: pretty, intricate, vivid colours and designs of tiny glass beads woven together into necklaces, bracelets, anklets and myriad other accessories.

But let’s just say that no-one comes to Panajachel for the architecture and ambience. What they do come for is Lake Atitlan, and believe me when I say you wouldn’t bother otherwise.

The lake is breathtaking. An expanse of deep blue, 300 metres deep in the middle and completely surrounded by sheer, green mountains. On the shore opposite Panajachel, three cone-shaped volcanoes rise up to 3000 metres, while dotted around the shores are villages ranging from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand inhabitants. All nestle between the shore and the rock, some are only accessible by boat or walking from another village (inadvisable to tourists; this is bandit country too).

Panajachel is perfectly situated to give stunning, serene views and particularly good sunsets from the shore (or bar). We rented the world’s oldest servicable pedallo, an early example of fibreglass, for a creaky and badly steered hour on the lake, taking in the views.

Most of the local inhabitants are pure Maya and the villages have lineage and archaeology dating back 2000 years. Each village has it’s own intricately patterned fabric worn by women, imposed by the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago to identify the inhabitants of each place. The fact this is now the traditional dress is either an indication of pride in the history and culture unique to these ancient hills, or like German Jews still wearing a star. I’m not sure which.

A small museum in Panajachel (a sop to culture) has a fascinating collection of pots and ceramics, with faces or animals moulded in, or patterns still visible. All were retrieved from the bottom of the lake, but why they were thrown there no-one knows.

We arrived on a shuttle bus late afternoon. Our original choice of hotel was fully booked, so we made a reservation for the following night and another later in the week and moved down the road. The hotel we ended up in was a clean, comfortable, newish squat block with a courtyard, down a quiet lane. It had proper hot water and not a ‘death shower’ with live wires leading straight into the shower head as we’ve had elsewhere. It was pretty hard to fault. The owner was a kind, cheerful man and we felt guilty the following morning when we left for the competition, telling him we were leaving for a village across the lake.

Our other hotel, though, was beautiful. At the other end of the same lane, it was a collection of wood and brick bungalows set in and around a lush garden.

It also had a traditional wood fired Mayan sauna, which gives a moist heat more like a steam room. We spent a relaxing and sweltering hour in the dimly lit, low brick hut. The only problem was the heavy curtain door, which gave a draught and cold area around your feet. This was a bit of a blessing when we threw a little too much water on the rocks and had to sit on the floor to avoid passing out in the heat.

San Pedro La Laguna is on the opposite shore, a short boat ride away from Panajachel. It’s also very touristy, but has a much more laid-back atmosphere. The village is split into two: the Mayan locals village up the hill and the gringo bit a street and maze of paths running close to the shore. We didn’t venture to the dull looking concrete housing of the locals, not least because the main street there from the dock is being paved so virtually impassable.

The gringo bit is famously hippyfied, the sort of place people spend a few months learning Spanish (or as a bloke Penny administered first aid to, when he passed out and hit his head, put it ‘getting away from the west’). It’s basically a community of funky bars, hotels and garden cafés. You can tell the type of place by the “No drugs”
signs in the bars and the offer of free Internet with your breakfast. It is, however, beautiful: a stunning volcano-side location and lake views. The locals are friendlier than the hippies, saying good morning as they pass, and there’s an odd mix of local and gringo: maize fields and drying coffee beans vie for space among the tofu parlours.

San Pedro also has it’s own dialect, unique to the area, spoken in a kind of drawl. I picked up a couple of phrases on our short stay:

Hello – Hey, ’sup man?
Yes, that sounds delightful – Awesome, dude

Our hotel room was just up from the shore and had a spectacular picture window looking out across the lake. Sadly, the patio hammock collapsed when I first got in and I pulled muscles in my neck and shoulder. The hammock was fixed later for a very pleasant hour swinging and reading. My injury was only partly fixed by a kind Texan massage lady in Panajachel.

In the morning, we rented horses for three hours trekking across town, out through forest and along a ridge to a look-out point on the headland. It was a lot of fun, and the missing bit of my Indiana Jones fantasy. I imagine I cut quite a dash, man and beast in perfect harmony. But the saddle sores aren’t the best accompaniment to my already sore shoulders.

When we got back to town, we slipped into a solar-heated thermal bath: a concrete hot tub with lake views and a cold plunge tub to add a refreshing edge.

The return to Panajachel by boat took twice the time as the outward journey, heading into a strong wind, with each wave, each time the boat left the water and each soaking splash back down undoing a little of the good our thermal bath had done us.

We finally left Lake Atitlan after four nights in the area. It would’ve been nice to stay a night longer in San Pedro, and explore some of the less touristy and more traditional villages, but time is lacking.

Our bus journey (2 fast changes) in the ubiquitous US school busses took us further up into the highlands to the wonderfully named Chichicastenango.

Our last bus was the most fun*: I don’t think I’ve properly hurtled before, through villages, up and down mountains and round hairpin bends. When we got off, the driver decided 5 seconds was more than enough and started to go, the back door still open and our rucksacks still on the roof while the poor assistant clung to the ladder on the back trying to pass them down.

* fun/nerve-wracking/agonisingly bumpy