First, the good: Lago de Atitlan is a lake in the Guatemalan highlands in a valley defined by thee volcanoes. The population and culture of the area is predominantly Mayan. The scenery was cloudy and hazy, but nevertheless stunning. It didn’t rain on us once, despite the fact that the Weather Channel app on my phone insisted we were in the midst of a constant thunderstorm.
The ugly: We knew ahead of time that Panajachel was going to be a tourist dump. We didn’t anticipate how aggressive the touts would be, not only there but all around the lake. It was nothing like this in Guatemala City, Flores, or Tikal. Here, you can’t walk five feet down the street in broad daylight without having ten people try and sell you textiles, beads, tours, tuk tuk rides, and random trinkets. (In Flores, we had to chase down the tuk tuk drivers. Here they chase us.)
Anyway, we signed up for a boat tour that took us to three of the other towns on the lake. Each town was built up on the hillside away from the water (which apparently can rise by as much as 10 meters). From the boat dock, each town had a steep “tourist street” leading up to the village proper. Once we ran the gauntlet of touts and vendors to the real village, we were safe to walk around unbothered and enjoy the untouristed areas.
San Juan La Laguna
San Juan is the smallest of the villages, but with the steepest climb from the dock. The most notable feature of San Juan is the sheer number of murals on the buildings. I’m just going to shut up and show you a few. Enjoy:
San Pedro La Laguna
San Pedro was the gaudiest of the towns we visited with a density of aggressive tuk tuk drivers unjustified by its size.
We escaped the crush by cutting down a side street and then a back alley, which emptied out not far from a small museum explaining the geology of the region, native dress and customs, and exhibited some very faded photographs of locals taking part in the traditional Mayan way of life.
On the way back through the alley we noticed that it too was covered by murals. While admiring them, we bought a small bunch of bananas from a passerby and ate them on the spot, because that’s what you do.
Santiago Atitalan
Santiago is the largest community on the lake. A long straight road uphill took us to the Cojolya Association of Mayan Women Weavers, a fair trade organization that runs a small museum on the making of Mayan textiles.
Wandering further from the (very large) sales area, we came up to the Iglesia Parroquial Santiago Apóstol, a church founded in – I kid you not – 1547. The age of the building was impressive, but the saints and biblical figures lining the walls inside were, I swear, shop dummies dressed up in a mishmash of homemade robes.
We took a side road back toward the docks where we came across a guy grilling food in the street. Obviously this was our lunch. I mean look at it!
When we planned to spend time around Lago de Atitlan, I’d been hoping for a little more natural beauty and less blatant consumerism, but then we’ve really got no one to blame but tourists like ourselves.
True Confession Time
Haggling. I hate it. I know it’s expected, I know it’s part of the culture in many parts of the world, but it never fails to skeeve me. It makes me uncomfortable, so I’m not very good at it. If there’s something I want to buy I almost always overpay without talking the seller down as much as I can. No matter what, I always feel dirty, knowing that someone ended up getting ripped off in the transaction. Give me a non-negotiable price tag any day. Haggling bugs me to no end.
Last Minute Pre-Post Update
Exhausted, we walked across the street to the Restaurante Santander for dinner. Our waiter, who served our food, two mojitos, and two Cuba Libres, was thirteen years old. Which surprised me, because I would have sworn he was ten.
