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| Beautiful but plastic Antigua |
Ask most travellers who have "done" Guatemala what they think of the old colonial city of Antigua and they will all coo that it is pretty, fun and that they stayed there longer than expected. I simply cannot work my head around this!!! For me it was overrun with tourists, the English language written and spoken everywhere, more expensive and just NOT AT ALL Guatemala!! We stayed two nights and then went on to Lago Atitlan, a place where I have really enjoyed calling home for the past week or so!
Julio, Melanie and myself chicken bus rided it to Panajachel, the main bus stop around the lake. Four buses/near-death experiences later and we made it! Albeit not without feeling exceptionally queasy. We took a boat to our first village around the lake, Santa Cruz and stayed in a popular hostel there... La Iguana Perdida. It isn't hard to see why. Luckily we made it for their Saturday Night Cross-dressing Party of dancing on tables, happy hour drinks, men with breasts, women with a swagger, the limbo, music chairs and other fun party delights! Here we met some fantabulous people... Robert the American doctor from Ohio, Jess the sweet Australian and a few more. The next two days in Santa Cruz were spent kayaking and playing boardgames... The rain proving relentless.
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| Me & Melanie on chicken bus |
From here Julio, Jess and myself took a boat across the lake to the peaceful San Marcos where I will be starting my Meditative Retreat later this week. It is small, hippie and "holistic" all over. We hiked around the village, searching in vain for a mysterious "waterfall" but had to return before the rain. And it rained and rained... And the power went out! We had a quiet night here staying in our cute pyramid-shaped rooms at the hostel and slept to the sound of the rainpour...
The next day we zipped over to San Pedro, the most notorious of the villages around the lake. We are staying in a hostel with phenomenal views of the lake, such an intense pleasure to wake up to. After a couple of days familiarising ourselves with the bigger lake town, partying a little, eating a lot, walking some, having fallen in love with this make-shift only midly touristy town, I signed up for Spanish classes at the Cooperativa of Guatemalan Spanish Teachers and began volunteering at the local Home for the Handicapped. More reflections on these to come...
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| View of Lago Atitlan from San Pedro, here is the Indian's Nose hill |
Love and very poorly kisses,
Anetta x
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