Woke up early this morning to get the bus to Panajachel on the Lago de Atitlan which is surrounded by 3 volcanos (wait, im reapeating myself!)The views from the bus were beautiful, very green. The bus driver and his companeros extremely nice (Jo asked them for some advice for the remainder of our Guate journey) and they would stop whenever there were people on the side of the road needing a ride...it seems that most mornings parents take their kids to school on these buses as schools are few and far apart. We had a near accident with a mini-bus but only good for a couple of laughs.
We arrived in Panajachel after stopping first in Solola, which is a market town with a huge white church and overlooking the lake and its volcanoes. The bus dropped us off in the main calle of Panajachel and it was up to us to find our hotel (Thank goodness for Lonely Planet :) We arrived only to find that our room wouldnt be ready for another couple of hours, so we went to the public beach (which I wouldnt recommend anyone to swim in) and took a couple of panoramic photos and portraits of the locals making their way to the beach.
Took a stroll around town, which is mostly geared towards tourists with plenty of shopping stalls with all the local artifacts and textiles (amazingly there are quite a few Guate tourists coming here, not just foreigners, which is something you wouldnt find in Leh, in the Indian Himalayas).
We spent the day pretty much trying to figure out our next step from here. Jo wanted to take the untravelled road to Coban that would then lead us to Flores and Tikal, however the untravelled road is really untravable due to road conditions so a journey that should take us 10 hours would take us 3 days only to get half way! We have now figured out our route but I guess you'll just have to keep reading to find out :)
In the afternoon we went by tuc-tuc to the Natural Reserve. This turned out to be very worthwhile as we got some really good views of the volcanoes, monkeys and another animal that is in between a monkey and a badger (or ant-eater) not quite sure how to describe but there were quite a lot of them and they were not at all shy to come near us :) Then we kept on the trail to discover a nice waterfall. All very beautiful, although i could have done without the spiders all over the trail! Lets just say Jo had a good laugh at me for that :)
On the way back we went to visit this outrageously ugly hotel geared for rich tourists right on the lake but made out of three skyscrapers in earth green (I guess they were trying to blend them into nature -- not a very good job!).
Tonight we will be enjoying a nice dinner by the lake side (hopefully the seafood will be nice cause after two days we are already beginning to tire of nachos hehehe) and tomorrow off on a boat ride to visit the surrounding villages.
Goodbye for now...Love Jo and Fil
1 comment:
Hello guys,
I wonder what are you two doing down there? Please take care of yourselves and all in all... may be I wish I were there too. I am coming into terms with some strange feelings nowadays here in Telavive, like how to survive if this city is attacked by missiles. I can not tell what I think of all this right now, but be sure that I do not like it at all. I will be coming back often to see how things are going and of course, expect to have some pictures of the places and people that you meet. Beijinhos,
Tina
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