Spirituality in San Marcos

So after my spanish classes and volunteering in San Pedro, I went back to the lakeside town of San Marcos, still around Lago Atitlan. Since I heard about it in Mexico city, I had intended to attend a month-long course called the Moon Course at a famous Spirituality study centre called Las Piramides located in San Marcos. However as I had taken too much time with my travelling, I only had time to attend for one week. The Moon course is a course dedicated to us asking the existential questions, Why Are We Here? Who Am I? What is the Meaning of Life? What is my Purpose in Life? etc etc, questions I seem to always be preoccupied by but even more so since my near-death experience.

The course was great and located in lovely lush gardens. I stayed in a pyramid-shaped cabana there and our learning temple was also a large wooden pyramid construct. Every morning we had hatha yoga classes and then a class on metaphysics, an attempt to encourage us to flesh out existential questions of how we live our lives and what life means to us. I find metaphysics deeply invigorating and oftentimes during one day I ask myself at least one question in this vein and so the metaphysics classes were absolutely perfect for me. In the evenings we had a meditation session which I loved as I was able to get in tune with my subconscious and free my mind from its regular clutter of (often useless) thought. We discussed many topics on which I feel strongly about; about how we are all one collective infinite consciousness and how instead of believing ourselves divided we should see ourselves as One and tune in to each other and the world around us in order to effect peace and unity. We also discussed the Subconscious Mind and how it can be played with with such concepts as Astral Travelling and Lucid Dreaming. I met some great people there, Lucy from London/Sydney, Ashley from Sydney, Lux from Switzerland, Sebastian from Bath and Rebecca from San Francisco. All really great vibes and all hoping to get in tune with their spirituality.

Anyways, I ended up leaving early as certain aspects were too much for me. I am all for spirituality but I am not for spirituality that becomes almost like religion. Worshipping crystal balls and consulting Oracles is too much, even for an ¨open-minded¨ (at least I THINK I am) person like me. Plus, there were David Icke followers. And most insulting of all, the Oracle told me I needed to CONQUER LUST and have more INTEGRITY in my life. How rude! So I had to leave...

And off I went, back to the colonial city of Antigua which I enjoyed far more this time around than the last. Looking beyond its gringoicity, I was able to enjoy the beautiful ruins and cobbled streets and gorgeous setting amidst volcanoes more acutely this time. In fact, I spent a glorious day in the gardens of an abandoned, ex-covent ruins reading my book with the birds all alone. Absolutely delightful! And a couple of days later, with a farewell to Antigua my good Texan friend Julio and I took leave for our next country, El Salvador.

From Antigua to Lago Atitlan...

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.

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...

View of Lago Atitlan from San Pedro, here is the Indian's Nose hill

Love and very poorly kisses,
Anetta x