So you hear nothing for two weeks and then two posts come along at once. Well, Guatemala has some-what slowed us down. After our 10 days at Lake Atitlan we decided to head for some sunshine on the Pacific coast. A 6 hour bus took us via the colonial city of Antigua and then on to the seemingly endless black sand beach of Monterrico. It’s been a while since we had some beach action and also, some proper sunshine so we had high expectations. We were not disappointed as the temperature rapidly increased as we neared the coastline. Accompanied by an American ex-pat Hostel owner from Antigua we cracked a couple of beers in anticipation of days doing nothing ahead.
We stayed at the El Delfin, which is one of your two main options there (The other main one being Johnny’s Place). It’s best described as a budget travelers resort, with reasonably priced rooms, cheap bar, good food and a swimming pool…plus plenty of hammocks. The latter being something I am becoming quite accustomed to as Ollie has already mentioned. Four nights for the price of three was a cheeky deal we took up, meaning a price of 150Q per night.
Leave nothing but footprints
What did we do? Nothing! Sweet FA. We sat in hammocks, drank some cold brews and read many books whilst listening to the ferocious Pacific pound at the boiling black sand with a soothing constancy. What can you do there? Well if you want to get up early (5am early), you can take a tour of the mangroves for some bird/animal spotting. However if you want a later activity, you can go to the turtle refuge in the evening and see them being released…or something like that. As you can imagine by my previous description of our activities, I was somewhat one track minded and took very little interest in the fella’s persistent sales pitch. Plus it was in Spanish so Ollie was his main target.
Nothing much else to do here but switch off and enjoy some magnificent sunsets.
What it has given us time to do is think about where we’ve been so far and where we want to go next. And we still don’t know. The main quandary that seems to be plaguing us right now is where we are going to spend Christmas and NYE. Does it really matter…probably not? Let’s not worry about the destination and enjoy the journey. Or something clichéd like that…
Either way, I can highly recommend Monterrico for a little R&R if you’re in Guatemala. Only 2.5 hours from Antigua; it’s worth it. I am told that the best weather is between November and February. The town itself is one paved road with a selection of identically priced ‘Comedors’ offering Fried Fish, Fried Chicken or Ceviche. We ate out a couple of times and it was all good, but the food at El Delfin is just as good (possibly better) for the same price.
Our only complaint is the mosquitos who managed to bite us in places we didn’t know we had. So, if you do go, make sure you bathe heavily in deet every night.
The three volcanoes of Lake Atitlan – Atitlan, Toliman and San Pedro
After our first night in Panajachel and our first taste of Guatemalan beers (Brahva and Gallo) we awoke early and padded down towards the lake for our first glimpse in daylight. It did not disappoint. The clear morning light that high altitude brings (around 1500m here) shone over the lake and the volcanoes in the distance, one of the most fantastic sights we’ve probably ever seen. The lake itself is 19km long and 10km wide, and over 320m deep. The surrounding volcanoes, many still active, give a clue as to how it was formed – as a result of a huge volcanic explosion some 85,000 years ago.
We packed our bags and headed down to the dock to catch a boat (known as a lancha) over to San Pedro la Laguna, one of the many towns that surround the lake. San Pedro has something of a reputation as a ‘party town’, so we weren’t too sure what to expect. We thought we’d maybe stay a day or two then head further round. As it was we ended staying for 10 days…
Boat ride to San Pedro
If you’d just like the visual highlights, click here!
Map of San Pedro
San Pedro town
Chicken bus of San Pedro
After wandering through the winding alleys of San Pedro we found a hostel called Zoola with a very relaxed air about it, including a bar and pool right down by the lake. And a hammock. This was the beginning of Rich’s love affair with hammocks that shows no sign of abating… Agreeing that this really wasn’t a bad spot we decided to stick around in the town and spend a week doing Spanish classes. For me some serious revision was in order after barely speaking a word since leaving university in 2007, and Rich was keen to understand more of what was going on around us and ask for what he wants. Which is usually a beer. So we signed up with one of the many local schools (Orbita) at the bargain rate of US$89 for a week’s one-on-one tuition, for 4 hours per day. This left us with Saturday and Sunday to enjoy before school started on Monday. In a fit of energetic resolve we also signed up to be woken up at 5.30am the following morning to climb up the nearest volcano, Volcán San Pedro. Our final decision of the day was less wise – rather than going to bed after dinner we spent the rest of the night at the bar chatting to a cast of interesting folk and taking advantage of the free shots with each drink. This was a poor choice. The next morning, before the sun was up we were driving up out of the town in a tuk-tuk to the national park, where we met Pedro, our guide for the day. We then began to walk uphill. Uphill is an understatement; this was essentially like climbing the stairs for not-far-off 3 hours. Just over halfway Rich’s digestive system gave up the ghost and he retreated to the woods to do some terrible things while I carried on up to the top with Pedro. Rich is not normally negligent enough to send me off into the woods alone with a man carrying a machete, but Pedro seemed like a good guy… An hour later we were at the top, over 3000m up, and despite the pain it was worth it. The views stretched out forever, into Mexico I’m told, and it really did feel like standing on top of the world. After descending, retrieving Rich on the way, we were back in the town for lunchtime and a big sit down. Being a Saturday, and our final night off before school we were once again drawn back to the Zoola bar after some dinner where we whiled away a few more hours chatting to some new found friends and some boys from Ireland singing all the old songs, eventually following some fire spinners to an ‘after-party’ some walk away through some corn fields. I forget the rest. One thing we have taken from this however, is that Mirinda is not an acceptable mixer for Captain Morgan.
Volcan Toliman from top of San Pedro
Ollie and the mighty Pedro!
6am view of the lake
Thats a lake…
It was time to check out of the Zoola if we were to achieve anything that week, so we negotiated a very good weekly rate (US$10 a night) at a hotel called Pinocchio with a hammock on the terrace that looked out over the lake and a very friendly tabby cat with a penchant for Doritos, who we named Oscar.
The next week was a shock to the system in terms of setting the alarm for 7.30am each day but with a little coaxing and some excellent local coffee from Café Atitlán on the way to school each morning we were on time every day. The school gave classes on two open-air terraces, with each student sat at a table with their teacher with views over the lake. It was a stunning spot but sometimes a little hard to concentrate with views like that! My teacher José was a lovely softly-spoken chap who spoke two Mayan languages, Tz’utujil and Quiché, as well and Spanish and some English. He quickly established that while I could more or less speak Spanish, the effort of finding the vocab in the recesses of my brain meant that I was often filling in the gaps with the wrong pronouns, verbs and tenses. The whole week was a great opportunity for me to chat with him while he gently corrected my errors. We chatted for hours about the history of Lake Atitlan and the local people, politics. I even learnt a few words of Tz’utujil, a fascinating-sounding languages full of letters including a Welsh-style ‘ll’, an Arabic-style ‘q’ and clicking glottal stops. Rich also had a great teacher, another trilingual guy although only 20 years old who introduced him to the joys of conjugating verbs. He learnt a huge amount for just a week though and can go off and order and buy things without my assistance, which may or may not be a good thing…
Oscar helping Ollie with her homework
Our classroom…
Coffee break at school
The rest of that week was fairly low-key, our afternoons spent doing homework and our evenings cooking dinner, chatting to our Dutch neighbours, or eating out at one of the fantastic local gringo places. San Pedro has a big Israeli presence which meant excellent falafel and hummus (especially at Hummus Ya)! We rewarded ourselves for a week of hard studying with some incredible homemade curries at the ‘Irish’ pub ‘The Clover’ – home-made naans, samosas; the lot. All in including beers for under a tenner. Our final night out there was at the opening of a fantastic lake-side bar called Sublime, listening to live music and watching the fire-spinners again. It would have been VERY easy to stay in San Pedro for some time; it was a beautiful spot to hang our hats for a while and a welcome break from being on the road, but as always with travelling the lure of what the next place might have in store means that you move on.
Fernando the fire obsessed maniac, at Sublime opening night.
The night bus is not one of my favorite activities. This one, from Oaxaca to San Cristobal de las Casas, is 10 hours and snakes around cliffs on tiny narrow roads. Narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic, we see bible passage quotations painted on the rocks at each treacherous turn. We have the front seats. We can see our narrow escapes accompanied by the various soundtracks courtesy of the drivers. The first being hard euro dance and the latter having a more authentic mariachi feel. Eventually, we arrive in San Cristobal. A small mountain town 2000m up. The sun is out and we decide to walk to our hostel and to our surprise, we both agree that this is one of the most picturesque scenes we have ever come across. The mountains that poke through the clouds frame the streets of multi-coloured red tiled houses. We find ourselves in the main square, and, overcome by the smell of fresh roasted coffee, we are tempted and sit to let the day begin around us.
San Cristobal was only on our list of destinations as a jump off point for Guatemala, and originally planned to not stay in the town and just leave on the next bus south. We then decided to stay for two nights. We stayed for five days in the end. Arriving at the charming hostel ‘Casa El Abuelito’, we were greeted by tranquil courtyard populated mainly by the French. This really did feel like we had somehow found our way into the Alps. We relaxed with more coffee for a few hours and after a quick nap went out to explore the town. Wandering through the streets, we immediately began to relax and found ourselves at a local bar and listened to a busker play until it started to rain. We decided to treat ourselves, after a month of eating from the street and had some steak and wine at the Argentinian steak house. It was awesome! Wandering home in the drizzle we felt quite content. We booked an extra night when we returned.
Casa El Abuelito Courtyard
The following days were similarly spent, just walking around and taking stock of our month so far in Mexico. The town has obviously seen some money recently, with boutique shops along the main drag, mainly peddling the local specialty that is Amber. Not only backpackers swarm here, there are all sorts of tourists who are mainly European.
There is darker side to this little bastion of calm. The town is surrounded by a poverty-stricken area known colourfully as ‘the belt of misery’. The occupants of this violent area are mainly ex-inhabitants of nearby Tzotzil villages, such as San Juan Chamula. Reasons for expulsion are mainly due to politico-religious tensions as the Chamulans, who still preserve some Mayan ways of life, are apparently fiercely independent and follow their own brand of ‘Chamulan Catholicism’ (which I am told heavily involves praying with Pepsi and burping to ward off evil). The adults fill the streets attempting to sell clothes and handicrafts (many of which are well made and attractive), while children as young as five approach you and ask for money with huge sorrow filled eyes. The area is also famed for being the base of the EZLN Zapatista movement from 1994. The town still has a slight hint of rebellion in the air and there are anarchistic slogans painted on walls all around the backstreets. It may be because of this history that the town attracts many Europeans with dreadlocks, who seem to have stayed to try to make a living out of making jewellery. Chiapas is one of the poorest states in Mexico and is the most in your face that we have experienced along the way.
On a lighter note, the place is wonderful and all sorts of activities can be undertaken in the surrounding area. We did not partake which led to a German from our hostel labelling me ‘the lazy Englishman.’ We explored all the town had to offer, but mainly relaxed. The weather is beautiful in the morning when the sun is out. But when it goes away, you are very aware of the temperature, which led to three layers and wooly hats at times. We were ready to go. Bus booked to Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, when we had a call from the bus company advising us that due to some kind of protest, we were unable to go. So we spent another night, this time in the company of a German/Swiss couple who were on a similar mission, drinking red wine and complaining about the temperature.
We finally managed to get on the small transport bus the next morning to take us to the Mexican/Guatemalan border. The town of Ciudad Cuauhtemoc was a four hour stint, steadily descending as we went in the company of 14 other souls. The roads were again treacherous, and the driving a touch risky at times, but we made it. On the way, I was feeling like we had cheated a bit by booking full transport to our final destination and not trying to do wander through the town of La Mesilla on the Guatemalan side and jump on the next chicken bus south. For a total of M$300 pesos (US$22) each, it was hard not to take the easy option, and also, as we discovered quite quickly at the border, a good thing we had!
Mexican immigration was a quick process, having already paid the M$295 pesos on our arrival in Baja at a bank, they wanted no more cash from us and stamped us through. Walking through the Mexican side was ‘an experience’ that I will never forget. Markets selling everything and nothing, offering last chances to buy that crap you could have bought everywhere else in the country with a cacophony of sounds and smells attacking us as we gingerly followed the driver through. There were some desperate looking people lining the road begging for money, that were at times heart breaking and far too much to take in all at once. “Dude, did you see that guy with his skull exposed?” asked the Aussie I had been chatting to. Unfortunately I had, and it’s something I am going to find hard to forget. We were taken to Guatemalan customs by the bus driver, who left us after we all got stamped through (without any hint of bribes from the officials I may add). We then all squeezed (I can’t emphasize that word enough) into a smaller van, once the driver had done a DIY wheel change, and off we went into the rugged jungle hills of country number 3,Guatemala….
Guatemala border in La Mesilla
If your reading this and thinking about fighting your way through this border and finding transport in Guatemala to ‘keep it real’, I can only suggest you take the easy option as it is a hectic and confusing place. Pay the few bucks more and save your chicken bus adventures for later on!
The journey is tough. The road is poor, the bumps many and the five hours punishingly slow, yet hectic as the driver nearly kills us at least three times by racing chicken buses along the passes. All around however, the terrain is majestic. Jungle-clad hills cover as far as the eye can see, as we snake through following a river upstream to our destination. After we let passengers off near Xela, the bus sighed with relief and we shuffled a bit, but then two more came on board, including a giant jolly Swedish guy, who oblivious to our struggle and pained expressions wanted to talk about his adventures. “You know in zee caves, zere are zese blind shrimp, zat will clean your teeth. But if you pick zee wrong shrimp, zey will start to strip your mouth. So far, I have only had ze good shrimp”. (Not mocking the dudes language skills as they were much better than my own, but the comedy accent made it even better!) With chat like that, I slowly warmed and the time passed a bit quicker.
Lake Atitlan from the shores of Panajachel – Aldous Huxley was right!
We got there. Panajachel on the shores of Lake Atitlan. 11 hours later and the lake slowly revealed itself to us as we descended. At first only seeing the peaks of the three volcanos that surrounded it with quick peep here and there of the lake itself. After finding a room, it was too dark to see, so we settled for some beers and grub to toast our new country. The next morning, we awoke to see the lake in all its glory.
hop on the good foot 