Lake Atitlan, etc.

This weekend, CJ and I took the shuttle out to Panajachel, which is on Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is similar Crater Lake in that it´s a volanic lake, and is also very big, clear, and surrounded by mountains (volcanos). It´s a very beautiful place, and the hotel where we stayed was very, very nice. They had little bungalos that were quite large and nice by Guatemalan standards, meaning that there were still some holes in the towels, etc. They´re very ecologically and economically sound in that they don´t get rid of things just because they have holes, etc, here even in the more upscale places. On Friday, we took the shuttle after school after running a few errands and getting some fries at McDonalds (something we never do in the states, but as there are few places where we know we can get something we can eat that is vegetarian and where we know it will be quick, it´s a more sensible thing here). The ride through the mountains was beautiful and we got to Panajachel at around 6:00. We walked down by the lake and overpaid for some mediocre pizza at a place on the water. In Guatemala, people in restaurants, etc, will let wandering street vendors come up to you in their establishments to sell you things which you´re eating. In Peru, they didn´t allow that kind of thing and I don´t remember it even being an issue in Mexico, but here it´s very commonplace. I´ve seen three or four people gathered around one tourist in a coffee shop showing her various kind of scarves, wall hangings, jewelry, etc, some of them even sitting down at a nearby table and the owners of the restaurant don´t mind a bit. It´s an interesting cultural thing. In Xela, because there are fewer tourists especially given the size of the city, it happens much less, but they were everywhere in Pana.
After we ate, we went back to the hotel, showered and went to bed early. On Saturday morning, we got up and went to the breakfast that was included in our hotel. It was very good, with scrambled eggs, fresh orange juice, bizarrely thick but tasty pancakes, and coffee. Then we asked the woman in the hotel office if she could find us a way to get a boat out to somne of the other villages on the lake. She arranged for someone she knew, Juan, to come pick us up and take us around to some of the villages. He had a boat big enoguh for probably 12-15 people but it was just CJ and I, and cost around $35 for several hours. It is amazing to me how inexpensive things are here, for the most part. The cost of living is just so much lower that evne for people who are middle or upper middle class here, things are far, far less expensive, which is nice for us, because the average weekly or monthly salary, depending on what you do, is what we might spend eating dinner out in the states, and that´s not even taking into consideration the people who are truly very poor.

Juan took us first to San Marco, which is defintitely one of the stranges places Í´ve ever been. It´s a very small village on the side of a mountain, and very jungly with little paths winding through the banana and avocado trees and coffee plants. Along with a population of Guatemalan Myans, there is probably an equal percetnage of the population that is composed of gringo hippies, who live there because they believe the place has a specific spiritual energy. There is a place there called ¨the pyramids¨ that appears to be a garden filled with silver, metalic pyramids in different sizes, the largest being maybe four feet tall. Apparently all of the buildings there are also pyramids, and people take classes there on spiritual enlightenment that begin every full moon and last until the next one. There were hippies all over the place. We met a twelve year old kid named Darwin who spoke inmpressively good ENlgish, and who wandered around with us for a while and who wanted to be tipped at the end, as they all do. We walked around town and observed the strangeness and then went back to the boat. Juan then took us to Santiago, which is a much, much bigger town (around 300,000 people) with a big market. We picked up a couple of gifts in the market, and then met up with an öffical tour guide¨ who showed us the big 16th century church and also took us to see Maximon, who is like a mayan god of vice. As I understand it, Maximon is some kind of combination of a traditional Mayan god, one of the Spanish conquestadors, and Judas. People give him offerings of cigarettes and rum and he is supposed to be able to cure you of your vices. Every year, Maximon lives in a differnt family´s house in Santiago, so you have to ask around or know where to go to find him. When we saw him, he as in a small, dark house with the ceiling fille with balloons, the floor covered with candles, and with offerings all over the place. There were three Mayan men in there when we arrived, two of whom, at least, I think were part of the family, and the third who was waving a container of incense and chanting prayers in one of the Mayan langauges. It was veyr strange and extremely hot in there. Amusingly, while we stood there watching this guy chant and wave his incense container, his cell phone rang and he stopped to answer it.
After we finished our öffical tour¨ we went back to the boat, and headed back to Pana. We got back to our hotel very hot and sticky and went swimming in the pool for a short time before it started to rain a bit. We went back to the room, showered, and then went to the Pana artisans´s market (which is basically just endless stalls stretching up and down the major street and with some side streets also filled with stalls). CJ and I shopped for souveneirs for people and got the obligatory magnet, and then stopped at a little cafe, where cj got cheesecake and I got something to drink. Eventually, we went to dinner at a cute Italain place overlooking the street. While we were there, there were fireworks going off, like the kind you would actually use for the fourth of july, not normal street fireworks, though I suspect it was just some random person setting them off. Just as we finished dinner, this guy who was probably around 30 showed up and introduced himself to us and we started talking. It turns out that he owns the restaurant, and though he is a native Guatemalan, he has been living in Amsterdam for the past few years, and teaches salsa classes. He says that his mom lives in Beverly Hills and though they haven´t been on good terms for years, he´s speaking to her now and is planning to come to LA in November, so we exchanged email addressed. He also invited us to go out with him and his seven year old daughter later, but as it was already about 8:00 at this point, I wasn´t sure what ¨later¨ entailed, and how ¨going out¨really works with small children, so we headed back to the hotel. We made a fire in the fireplace, which did make the room somewhat smokey, but worked pretty well considering that everything in Guatemala is vagely damp, and considering that for some reason they did not provide any fire pokers or other tools. CJ and I read by the fire and then went to bed. On Sunday, we got up, eat breakfast, CJ spend the majority of the morning being spectacularly rude, and then we went out to the market, and to get some coffee before our shuttle home at 4:00. We stopped at a little restaurant on the main street and had some fizzy water, nachos, and fries for a snack. While we were there, it started to pour rain, and four or five kids who had been selling things on the street (and a stray dog)all came in to hang out until the rain stopped. The kids asked four our extra food which we gave them and they chased each other around the restaurant, laughing, arguing about who was going to get more fries. It was pretty funny. The woman who was running the restaurant didn´t seem the least big bothered by any of this, or the fact that the ceiling was leaking. Eventually the rain let up some, and we walked back to our hotel where we waited for the shuttle and returned to Xela. I´ll do a second small post about today, which was far less interesting.
Note on pictures:
The way I´ve managed to set things up, I´m able to select pictures to attach directly from my camera to the computer. I do not, however, seem to have any kind of preview capacity, so I don´t know which pictures I´m attaching until I see them once they´re attached. I select them at random because they´re all named things like ¨DCM2937738¨ etc. I have a vague sense of the chronology of things, of course, but that´s about it. So what we have attached to this post are:
1. the 16th century church in Santiago
2. the market in Panajachel (picture by CJ)
3.and 4. Lake Atitlan from the boat
5. CJ at the restuarant where we stopped for drinks in Santiago
6. CJ eating pizza on Friday night in Pana
7. the bracelet CJ bought at the market, which she wanted everyone to see, so it´s nice it attached
8. inside the church in Santiago, the same at from picture 1.