Guatemala IV – Lago de Atitlan

After an adventure packed couple of weeks with hiking and caving, we felt due for a bit of a change of pace. I’m not one for believing in esoteric things, but I really do think Lake Atitlan has some sort of magnetic and calming quality. It’s a huge lake covering an area 12kms by 5kms, sitting at 1,563m above sea level, with mountains and three volcanoes (San Pedro, Atitlan and Toliman) surrounding it and Mayan villages of varying sizes nestled along the shores.

From left to right: Volcanoes Toliman, Atitlan and San Pedro – almost permanently covered by clouds!

Transport between the villages is most often by boat, although tuktuks go to neighbouring villages also.

We arrived first in San Pedro, the most “backpacker” of the towns, after a full day of transport from Semuc Champey. It seemed like a nice but fairly average town full of Spanish schools, restaurants, bars and hostels until we ventured up the steep hill to the area where the locals live.

There we found an awesome stall on the edge of the fruit/vege/meat market with local ladies selling hot cereal drinks called atoles (think rice & milk, oats, wheat, banana etc) and sandwiches or tortas (big crispy corn discs) with loads of veggie fillings/toppings for less than $0.50. For a week I think we were their best customers!!

Atoles served in old candle glasses

Xavi also found a local barbershop, which had a mix of pictures on the walls from soccer players with designs razored in to 70s styles for a $2 haircut (in case you were wondering, the beard was not harmed in the process).

Our favourite breakfast spot!

We wanted to get a good view of the whole lake so we signed up for a 4am hike to “The Indian Nose” for sunrise. We walked through corn and coffee plantations in the dark to arrive at the lookout to watch the sun peek through the clouds and light up the lake and volcanoes. Our guide Juan told us all about the Tz’utijil Mayan warrior tribe, who fought against the Spanish invasion with “submersible warriors” in the lake. The Spanish Armada was severely punished by skin-divers who teased their enemies with gold and then drowned them by holding them underwater for up to 5min. Obviously, this doesn’t come in the history books.

The Indian Nose

Sunrise over the lake

Another cool feature is the old town submerged in the middle of the lake at a depth of  80m. It was built when the Mayans arrived, before the lake had formed. Unfortunately it’s too deep to dive there unless you have technical training and equipment.

Lake and volcanoes Toliman & Atitlan from the Indian Nose

On the way back from the Indian Nose, we got a tuktuk to San Marcos, a chilled out place which has made it’s name as a spiritual retreat, now full of yoga and meditation schools. The highlight for us was a visit to Cerro Tzankujil, a small natural park on the lake, with a lookout and a platform to jump into the lake. It used to be 12m high, but the rising level of the lake has reduced that to 8m in the last few years. Still, it’s been the best views while cliff jumping so far!

Local football league game in San Marcos

Santiago is the largest of the towns on the lake and had a much more commercial tourism feel, with lots of typical souvenir shops and touts trying to get us to go to different places. After visiting the church, we were approached by several local men offering us (as if it were an underground secret) to visit Maximón, a local deity that is housed in a different brotherhood member’s house each year. Apparently locals visit with traditional offerings of cigarettes and rum to worship and ask it for blessings. It seemed like a rort to get tourists to donate entry fee, alcohol and cigarettes to the family so we gave it a miss.

However a local story that had taken our interest…El Paso Misterioso (the Mysterious Pass), several people in different villages had mentioned to us the existence of a strange road where you can stop a car going up the hill, turn off the engine and the car goes up by itself! So we set off to find the road with its own laws of gravity in a chicken bus. The bus dropped us off on the road in the middle of nowhere indicating we were there and zoomed off on its way. We walked along the road a little, trying to figure out which way the slope was going and then tried placing the water bottle down to see which way it would roll.

El Paso Misterioso

Just as we were getting a bit frustrated by our stationary bottle (to be fair it had been a but dinged up so wasn’t perfect for rolling), a ute with locals driving by saw us and our disbelief and stopped. The driver, annoyed at how sceptical we were, turned off his engine and his car did in fact roll backwards up the very slight slope. He also got us to pour water on the road to see which way it ran…success even if it was just an optical illusion!!

He then offered us a ride back to town in the back of the ute. During a short stop at a local coffee plantation on the way, we learnt that they were agronomists working with the coffee farmers to try and solve issues with “la roya” (rust), a fungus affecting much of Central America’s coffee crop.

Lake from Panajachel

The last of the lake towns we visited were Panajachel and Sta. Cruz. Panajachel was the most touristy of them all, in both the quantity of tourist restaurants, souvenir shops and the prices for everything, but it was nice for a change; and Sta Cruz, was the opposite, with just locals around but some of the best lake views from the steep road going up to the residential area.

Bat-Tuktuk

PE lessons in Santa Cruz

Before we even noticed it, 6 days were gone, so we made our way to the first city in our trip. Coming soon, Quetzaltenango!

 

Guatemala III – Semuc Champey

After the Mayan ruin overdose of Tikal & El Mirador we travelled 8 hours south towards one of the most recommended spots of our journey: the natural pools of Semuc Champey.

This nature’s gift is hidden in a dense tropical forest, in the course of the Cahabon river. The closest town, Lanquin, is only accessible by unsealed, winding roads and, to make things more interesting, the whole area had no electricity supply as a consequence of a long dispute with the electricity supplier due to high rates, unpaid bills as a protest, a big storm and then unrepaired power lines as a reaction. Lots of the hostels had invested in generators but we have to admit that we enjoyed a few days without internet connection and candle lights.

This is what happens when the inspiration from the Tikal ruins meets no electricity

We spent the first day in the area recovering from the long walk to El Mirador and, after washing a big pile of stinky clothes from the trek, we couldn’t find a better way to relax than tubing in the river rapids! We have a few videos that we’d love to share but no hostel computer is prepared to process the gigantic files from the gopro… so we will work on them when we go back home.

The day after, we decided to celebrate my birthday with an action-packed visit to Semuc Champey. The tour of the park starts caving the labyrinth like Kam-Ba Cave with the only light from a candle. The river flows very close to the cave so, apart from climbing up and down we also had to jump into pools, swim and slide down rocks trying to keep the candles alight.

The darkness and feeling of exploring the guts of the earth makes the whole experience really exciting and heaps of fun.

The caveman with the birthday candles

Back to the daylight, the second attraction was a giant rope swing into the river. We could have spent the whole day there trying different jumps and pirouettes and we begged for one more go as if we were kids in an amusement park!

Alehop!

 However, a 15 meter jump was waiting from the bridge… and from previous posts, you know that we can’t say no to this sort of adrenaline rush.

Jumping from the bridge into the Cahabon river

We could have called the day after these 3 activities, but the natural pools were calling and, after all, they were the main reason of our visit. After an hour hike, passing by an enticing lookout, we reached the pools.

Great views from the lookout

Semuc Champey means “where the river hides in the mountain” and there’s no better way to describe it. The furious waters go underneath the mountain, leaving the pools above to be filled with the turquoise waters from the mountain springs and to be enjoyed by everyone.

The next hour was spent jumping from pool to pool as if there was no tomorrow.

I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present, a naturally beautiful spot with plenty of things to do that made me feel 23 rather than 32!

We spent our last night at a hostel in Lanquin, which was all to ourselves. Alex, the Guatemalan owner, was particularly keen to share a few birthday drinks and tell us his amazing story which involved moving to Texas in his teenage years, smuggling drugs between LA and Chicago and spending 10 years in a US Federal prison. While he probably made his experience sound better than it really was, we were really surprised to hear about the work & study opportunities he was given, the inventive ways they tattoed themselves (it’s strictly forbidden) and the politics among the 3 main groups in prison: whites, blacks and latinos.

Contrary to our beliefs, it was relatively easy for him to stay out of trouble, except when there was a fight among any of these groups. Not participating in it was synonym to being lynched by your own clan after.

While we didn’t stop during our time there, sleeping in real beds and swimming in water recharged our batteries after the long incursion into the jungle… and set us ready for our next section of the Guatemalan trip: the magnetic Lake Atitlan!