Panajachel

Guatemala - May 2005

Sunday, May 22, 2005

Yesterday we drove the coast road from Bahía del Sol to Esquintla, Guatemala and then up the hills to Antigua.  We kept a good eye out for any signs left by Hurricane Adrian especially along the cliffs between La Libertad and Acajutla.  Except for a few places where water had spilled out into the highway, leaving a small smear of mud and a few fallen over trees, we saw no signs that any storm had passed.  The trees covered in pretty red flowers still were covered in flowers and the flimsy palapa restaurants along the cliff still had their palm-frond roofs indicating to us that the winds could not have been very strong. 

We arrived at the border a day late for the car papers, but the aduana there took the hurricane as a good enough excuse so there was no fine.  It was one of our quickest crossings yet possibly due to our arrival at the border with plenty of time before noon.  We got into a super downpour as we started up the hill to Antigua so we arrived at the hotel with a super clean car.  Another downpour caught us as we ate dinner and by the time it let up, all the roads that we had to cross to return to the hotel had become small rivers.  I had my sandals on so wading across was no problem but Bill had on his tennis shoes that got quite wet.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Monday I woke up feeling poor so we opted to spend another day in Antigua before driving on to the town of Panajachel on Lago Atitlan.  Bill took the opportunity to use the internet café again but ended up spending much of his web time getting our plane tickets to fly to Oregon in late June.

Tuesday, after coffee at Fernandos Restaurant, we checked out of the hotel and drove northerly to Lago Atitlan.  We stopped for breakfast about an hour into the trip at Restaurant Mirador near the town of Tecpan.  It had a fabulous view over the lush vegetable fields and out to a volcano on the horizon.  The turn off to the ruins of Iximche was closed, so we continued on to Los Encuentros where we made the turn to the steep downhill climb to the lake.  In the small town of Sololá we encountered an interesting unmarked detour as it was market day and some of the main streets were closed.  We arrived in Panajachel and with little difficulty found the hotel recommended by Colette: the Posada Monte Rosa.  It is a very nice hotel with secure parking run by a friendly indigenous family, the lady of the family even wears traditional clothing. 

Today we took the lake tour covering three villages, San Pedro La Laguna, Santiago Atitlan, and San Antonio Palopo.  We had about an hour in each village to walk around.  San Pedro had the least vendors trying to sell us native goods and contained a large number of young northerners.  In Santiago Atitlan we saw mostly traditionally dressed folks and their strange looking fishing boats.  Vendors lined the street as we walked up to the main plaza.  We did not enter the church as a service was in progress, but looking in we could see the pews were full of colorfully dressed women and some men.  San Antonio appeared to be a weaving center and we purchased some of the beautiful hand done material.   We ate dinner at one of the many restaurants overlooking the Panajachel docks, watching as a thunder storm rolled through.  Desert was a late afternoon ice cream closer to town on one of the main streets where we saw children and young adults in costumes running down then up the street chasing the children.  Upon asking we were told that tomorrow is Dia de los Corpus and this was just the beginning celebration for it. 

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Today was the celebration for Corpus Cristo with many pagan undertones.  After breakfast we walked up to the central plaza and the church behind with its own open plaza where the festivities would be happening.  We watched two drunks dance for awhile.  The church was opened and four religious statues were brought outside and placed in a line in front of the doorway.  A marimba was carried up the street and placed on a platform.  Costumed men soon arrived who danced to the music of the marimba and drums.  The number of dancers gradually increased throughout the morning and early afternoon.  About 1:00pm, amidst the firing of large firecracker bombs, the parade started.  First were all the masked and costumed dancers followed by the marimba, drums and the flutist.  Next in line were the four statues carried by four men each with and an intermingling of the citizenry of the town.   Bill and I followed the procession to the wye in the road where the procession turned back toward the church and we continued down toward the water to find ourselves a lunch.  While we were eating it rained quite hard, but soon after the rain stopped the procession passed the restaurant with the processors getting more and more drunk as time passed.  They carried with them their cannon stands so that they could stop along the way to blast the town with more of the very large firecrackers.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Market Day at Sololá was the activity for today.  After breakfast we boarded a bus to take us up the mountain to the small town of Sololá.  The bus was crowded with the locals heading off to the market.  These are old school buses from the US, painted in bright colors but still school bus’s sized seats that were crowded with at least three adults to a seat and sometimes a few more small children besides.  Besides us we only saw one other tourist couple at the market.  The stalls were foods, pots and pans, native clothing all brightly colored and other items that the locals would want.  We saw no stands selling the tourist goods normally seen along the streets in the towns that expect the tourist shopper.  I took some photos but only made one purchase of a used huipile or native blouse.  The bus back to Panajachel was just as crowded with Bill and I being the third person in the seats on the isle across from each other and filling the isle. 

Lunch was eaten upstairs near the waterfront where we could watch vendors and tourists on the street below and still look over the lake.  We sent out a few mails from a nearby internet café and read in the hotel room for the remainder of the afternoon.

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Sunday we drove around the lake to San Lucas Toliman, stopping at several great overlooks to view the lake.  From Toliman we headed south toward the coast, meeting up with low-altitude road from Mexico to El Salvador and stopping for the night in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa.  We spent the rest of the Sunday afternoon and Monday morning driving around to visit the archeological sites around El Baul and the Olmec-like carved heads in the town of La Democracia.  We saw quite a few stone carvings and a few stele. The statues and stele had been gathered from the cane fields and were mostly located in two museums, although we did visit one site that had two monuments sticking out of the ground on top of a buried pyramid.    Monday afternoon we completed the drive back to Bahía and Lanikai.