Lake Atitlan

It was a scenic but bumpy trip to Lake Atitlan and at a certain stage the shuttle bus had to drive through a river where the bridge had been washed away during a storm 2 years ago and had not been replaced. The towns around Lake Atitlan differ from eachother, including the local language and the Guatemalans either travel between the places by boat (mainly to shop for certain goods in the bigger town) or by tuk tuk (motor taxi) for shorter trips, and for both they pay less than us tourists. From Panajachel it was a 40 minute boat ride to a small town where we would stay for the next 4 days: San Marcos La Laguna.

San Marcos is a hippie town where people often stay longer than planned, a lot of the hippies even end up adopting a stray dog. Treatments and courses in meditation, yoga, massage and spiritual meditation are the big attractions. Geert and I agreed to come on this trip with an open mind and, looking forward to trying something new, enrolled in a session. For the real fanatics some classes start at 5am, we found a class at a yoga hostel starting at 9am and spent the first 1,5 of 3 hours in guided meditation, led by a young Australian teacher. The next 30 minutes was for yoga philosophy where she told the lifestory of an Indian guru, Ramana Mahashi. This was then followed by an hour of hatha yoga which we performed with our eyes closed. Although it won't become a regular hobby, we were pleasantly surprised at how quickly the time went and what the experience taught us.

It could have been a lake in the swiss alps, such a beautiful area. With the local people living up on the hill, the area near the lake is mainly occupied by small hostels, yoga and massage centres, restaurants, cafe's and stands where locals sell fruit, nuts and hand made crafts. They are mainly situated along the pathway coming up from the lake - the ladies selling cookies also subtly advertise the space cookies they have for sale.

We became friends with Steven, a young American who was working in the hostel as a volunteer. He had a few movies saved on the owner's laptop and, seeing as Geert had just finished reading the book, organised an extra movie night so that we could watch 'The Life of Phi' on the hostel's big screen. During this and the next movie night, we enjoyed the wood-oven pizzas for which the hostel is known together with 3 fun girls, Jenna and Alesandro (South Africans) and Cecilia (Argentinian living in Tulum who we promised to visit when we get to Mexico).

In order to draw money we took a tuk tuk to the next town but, as we have had in some other places, none of the 3 ATMs would accept our Maestro card. It was the tuk tuk driver's lucky day- he had to take us back to San Marcos using the tourist rate and we had no choice but to pay in dollars. We were hoping to exchange our dollars in San Marcos but didn't expect it to be quite so difficult. Paul, the owner of the hostel, helped us in a big way and changed them using a decent exchange rate.

The shuttle we would take to our next destination broke down before picking us up, forcing us to stay an extra night. We didn't mind at all actually, it meant that we could enjoy more of the good food and great vibe with the people we had met. Steven had the morning off and took us to 'The French Bakery' which is in part of a local's house and we ordered the popular vegetarian burger while playing around on the guitar. That last night the group of us went to sing our hearts out at a nearby hostel during their karaoke evening.

We left with a shuttle the following day, this time it did arrive although we first had to take a tuk tuk to the next town. This ride wasn't without its hiccups either: when the shuttle could not make it up a hill through a section of dirt road, the 14 passengers had to get out and walk up the hill. With the help of drivers from about 5 other cars he eventually made it up to the top. Thereafter it was either the clutch, the brakes or both which he feared would fail because the 2 hour trip back to Antigua took twice as long!