Weekend at Lake Atitlan

Spent Saturday and Sunday at Lake Atitlan, but most of the time was trying to get out of the rain. I should say we were lucky though, that it was sunny for two hours as we looked around for a place to stay (and settled on a hostel for 30Q each--about $4)...and that it seemed to start raining everytime we were DONE touring another town. We found ourselves ducking into many cafes and eating mucho to stay out of the lluvia. Tim and Rachel were sick so it ended up being me and three girls on the trip. We saw santiago, which was pretty dumpy...and then San Pedro, a kind of cool little town but also a bit dirty and crowded. Once you get out of Antigua you absolutely see how different a third world country is...especially when you travel through small towns between cities.

The ride up was interesting, we paid for 6 seats but only the 4 of us showed up since two were sick. So we get about 30 minutes out of town and the driver gets a phone call and turns around because they´d gotten 2 more people. So we were delayed about 90 minutes in total, which would ultimately result in us not having much time in the other lake towns. I used my newfound spanish skills to tell the driver that since he sold our seats to someone else and wasted an hour of our time that we should get our money back...and his response was ¨you can ask¨. There are so many middle men that I am pretty sure that was the closest I was gonna get to any reciprocation. The drive is pretty ridiculous. The van seems to have no shocks, and it´s the curviest sections of road I´ve seen. The rural areas are just one farm on top of the next, and I think all farming is done by hand for the most part. The cities are just old concrete structures piled on top of each other, even the so-called charming communities like san Pedro del laguna.

The boat ride to Santiago and San Pedro was fun, and both cities were beautiful from the water. However, once you get about 100 meters off the water it´s kind of nasty. In San Pedro, we happened upon some high school kids practicing for a big band competition, which I´m told is for the Antigua festival in a week´s time. We got off the dog and thought we heard African tribal drumming or something, and followed the sound through people´s farms, past a hidden basketball court where Guatemalan girls were showing why they haven´t won gold yet in the olympics, and out to a beautiful point overloooking the lake where about 30-40 kids were practicing. About six boys were pounding huge war drums while the women were mostly playing xylophones...except for a few on what I think were snare drums. Then there were six guys who couldn´t play the trumpet to save their lives. We got some good video footage though, and managed to get that one song stuck in our heads for quite a while. We walked up the hill where they had some little carnival with rides and games, and bought a coconut with a straw in it and then headed back to Panajachel, our home base.

We decided to have a couple of drinks before dinner, and came up with a game where someone would say a spanish or english word from the dictionary, and whoever translated correctly didn´t have to drink. We decided this is a great way to improve our spanish vocabulary. If you´re going to drink, you may as well learn, right? We went to a seafood restaurant on the water that was recommended by a friend, but unfortunately since lunch is the main meal here they were pretty much out of everything. We all got cheeseburgers. We did see a fantastic fireworks display out at San Pedro that was visible from our table on the water, however.

We then made our way to a club call Socrates or something, which was interesting. It was clear that the Guatemalan guys go there to meet white women. I was with a Dutch girl with very dark skin because her father is from Suriname, and a Caymanian(?)...and a white girl from London who was asked to dance by about 5 different local guys. Apparently the local guys dance well, but are overly forward and smell horribly. At any rate, we had a good time but were ready to head back to Antigua.

Sunday was pretty mellow. Ran into Jet (American) and Magali (French) from our school, who happened to be staying next door to us without our knowing. Jet works at Purdue U and is driving a motorcycle all the way to see his sister in Bolivia. Pretty daring, if you ask me. We then ate lunch and proceeded to search for Chocolate cake that my Dutch friend Sue desparately needed for some reason. I also forgot to mention that our breakfast restaurant was apparently a family business because an 8 year-old girl took our order and walked our coffees and teas out carefully, one at-a-time. It was very cute, and we gave her a good tip as she was the best server we´ve had all trip! We tried to ask for syrup instead of honey for the panqueques, but she brought grape jelly. I´m sure it was good though. The coffee here was incredible. It´s obvious the the Panajachelians brew real coffee, instead of the instant stuff we get for free at school! Probably the best coffee I´ve ever had, and I hope to get more like that at some point soon.

Sunday we headed back to Antigua and I was very excited to be back here. I now have two new housemates: two female teachers from Michigan who are here to teach english for a few weeks.

More to come later!