Guatemala – Exploring Lago De Atitlan

Friday, the last day of our first week of school, another cloudy day greeted us as we awoke. Ann had requested to accompany our host, Teodora, on her daily shopping to the local mercado in order to get another glimpse into her daily life. The mercado is uphill from the dock in the main part, el centro, of our town (pueblo).

You won’t see many tourists up there so it feels more local. Most tourists hang out in the area around the dock which is nicknamed “Gringolandia”. We got to observe how Teodora greeted and chatted with several people along the way as she selected fruit, vegetables, bread and meat.  After the market, we visited the park and the local Catholic church.

There are eleven pueblos around Lake Atitlan.

Panajachel

San Pedro, our home for 4 weeks, is at the southwest end of the lake. Saturday morning, even though it was cloudy and gloomy, we decided to pay a visit to the second largest pueblo on the lake, Panajachel (Pana).  Getting there is by lancha (boat) and takes about 20 minutes and costs Q25 (quetzal 7.43 to the dollar at time of writing) each.

Going over, it was cloudy but not raining so all of the clear plastic windows were up and the front of the boat was open, making for a pleasant ride across the lake.

Pana gets the most tourists and is a favorite of long term travelers. To get to the main part of town, when exiting the lancha walk straight past the Texaco station until it dead ends, then turn right and you are on the main street, where you can follow signs for centro and to visit the church. The main tourist street is Santander, accessible either from the main street or by turning right on the first street when exiting the lancha and walking until you reach Santander. Pana, unlike San Perdo, has a larger supermarket, Supermarket Chalos, on the main street,  where we stopped in to pick up a couple of things, but even in a small supermarket, there just isn’t any quality chocolate. There are lockers by the entrance for storing backpacks, etc. for use while shopping.  As we were wandering around exploring the town, we came across Dina’s Chocolates where we bought a small chocolate bar which turned out to be pretty good. We also visited the Chocolate Museo (really just a store) which has a rather interesting history of chocolate on placards, plus samples of the chocolate they make, including a chocolate tea with cinnamon which Ann really liked.

While their products are not cheap, we ended up purchasing a few items to satisfy our chocolate craving. So far even through Guatemala produces chocolate, the chocolate we have found is expensive even by US standards. Ian tried one of the Chocolate Museo bars and it’s very intense with almost a burnt taste and a texture that is a little gritty. So a little goes a long way to satisfy that ever-present craving.

We were planning on having lunch in Pana but neither of us was hungry and it had started raining so we headed back to San Pedro for the fun ride back. Not! When we arrived at the dock, the boat was empty so Ian sat in the front row with Ann behind him. Since it was raining, all of the windows were zipped closed. As we got ready to leave, they put up a blue plastic tarp to stop the rain from coming into the boat, totally cutting off the view, not to mention any air. The whole ride back, Ian was looking at a blue plastic tarp about a foot from his face, which both he and the man on the other side of the front row had to trap with their feet and arms to prevent it from hitting us and the woman between us in the face. Looking at her face, it appeared she was having a hard time not getting sea sick. In addition, the waves had kicked up so every couple of minutes, we got launched into the air to come crashing down on the hard plastic seats. Our first (mis)adventure on the lancha! Apparently the winds picking up in the afternoon and making the ride back to San Pedro uncomfortable is normal. Perhaps it was the cloudy day and rain, but neither of us found Pana to be very interesting; we prefer San Pedro. However, if we were going to stop by Lake Atitlan for a few days or a week, we might stay in Pana for one reason: for transportation connections, it really is the best place. The trip from Guatamela City to Pana takes 3 hours; it takes 4 ½ hours to San Pedro and the last hour is over some pretty rough roads.

Then There Was Sun

Then on Sunday, our eighth day in Guatemala, we awoke to an unexpected surprise. The sky was blue and there was a yellow object in the sky and the air felt warm. We checked with our weather app and it still showed rain for the next 15 days. Then something clicked. The Weather Channel app was useless when we were in Hawaii, maybe the same thing was happening. We downloaded the AccuWeather app to our phones and what a surprise: their seven day forecast was for sunny morning and rainy afternoons. We’ll take it.

We started the day off having breakfast at an Italian bakery that we found called Idea Connection in part of San Pedro that we hadn’t seen before. The owner is originally from Milan. We had great croissants and real coffee! Something else we’ve discovered that is a little weird, Guatemala is a country that produces some of the best coffee in the world, but at our home stay, in many households, and at our school, what we are served is instant coffee. In addition, good coffee is about the same price as in the US. The breakfast was also a nice break from Guatemalan food. While our host mother is a great cook, it is nice to have a break one day a week.

Santiago de Atitlan

Since the weather was nice, we took a lancha from a different dock to Santiago Atitlan, the next town over (to the southeast) and the largest pueblo on the lake.

While it’s much closer than Pana, it took 45 minutes because the boat goes much slower. Our host family had told us that the fare would be Q100 for both of us round trip and it was. Be warned, once you get off of the lancha in Santiago, the hordes will descend trying to sell you a tuk tuk tour (we were quoted Q200 each). Our host family had told us that it should cost Q5 each for the ride to see Maximon which would be too hard to find ourselves (they were right on both counts). We walked out of the dock area and a few blocks up we were able to get a tuk tuk for the recommended price. Our driver was great, he even gave us directions on how to walk back past the Catherdral and mercado which were the other sights we wanted to see.

• Maximon – He is a Mayan deity <insert Wiki link>. Since he isn’t welcome in the Catholic church, he is moved from house to house once a year, which is what makes him hard to find. The Maya come to petition Maximon for things they need (often health), bringing offerings of cigarettes, beer, and the local equivalent of Tequilla (Quetzalteca) . Maximon smokes the cigarettes, drinks the beer and Quetzalteca. Our tuk tuk driver told us the admission was Q2 each and Q10 for taking a picture. We opted to pay for admission; interrupting their ritual by taking a picture seemed out of place.
• The Cathedral – The church, larger than the one in San Pedro, has a large banner outside and a tomb inside for Padre Stanley Francis Rother (the father who wouldn’t run away) who was born in the U.S. but identified with and lived with and was loved by the people of Santiago Atitlan. He was martyred in 1981 during the civil war, which ended in 1996.
• The Mercado – The final place we visited was the Sunday mercado, a huge outdoor market, the largest on the lake.

After taking the lancha back to San Pedro, the sun was still out and we saw the Volcano San Pedro for the first time in the week we have been here!

Our next stop was Smokin Joes Southern BBQ which is held every Sunday. This was a bit of a splurge but worth it and still a good value compared to what the equivalent would have cost us in the US. For Q150 ($20), we got a sampler plate for two with 1lb pork ribs, a large portion of beef brisket, ¼ chicken, along with unlimited sides, which served as both our lunch and dinner. Our final stop was to pick up our laundry, Q35 for about 8 lbs of clothes, washed, dried, and folded.

Note: We think a lot of the younger (millennial) students do a lot of these excursions on weekday mornings or afternoons, depending on when they have classes, but we find we need that extra time on weekdays to study Spanish.

With the weekend over, so was most of our free time as we entered our second week of classes. Here’s what a typical weekday looks like for us – very exciting….

• Get up at 7am.
• Breakfast with the family at 730 am until about 830 am which includes Spanish practice.
• Take a walk around town for exercise 30-60 minutes.
• Shower and get ready for the day.
• Study Spanish for 2 to 3 hours. We get the impression that the younger folks don’t need to do as much studying as we do.
• Eat lunch with our family at 1pm with Spanish included.
• Head across the street to school at 2pm.
• Private tutoring until 6pm with a 20 minute break at 4pm.
• Come back to the room and collapse until dinner.
• At 730pm eat dinner with the family and practice our Spanish.
• Play cards with the family (muy divertido) and practice our Spanish.
• Head back to our room about 9pm.
• Do some reading until bed. (While, we think, the younger generation is out on the town.)

How’s the Spanish going? Since the last post was kind of gloomy, we thought we’d give a little update. We completed the second week of school. This was an intense week going over all the irregular verbs. Well, perhaps not all – could there possibly be more?! Talking with another non-millennial student, we believe that weeks three and four should be a little easier. Ian is still struggling but we can see that he’s making progress. One of his issues seems to be his inability to memorize quickly. Ian’s teacher is very young with not much teaching experience and doesn’t seem to realize that being older, our ability to memorize isn’t as quick as the 20 somethings. He’s had to advocate for himself a number of times. He considered asking to change teachers, which is permissible at the end of each week, but at this point has decided not to. Ann’s teacher is a bit older and his experience seems to allow him to be more flexible with how he teaches. Ian is making progress and is speaking more with our family during meals. When looking at the cost of teaching by itself, it’s an amazing bargain at $5.74 per hour. Ann is having a great time studying with her teacher and making excellent progress. We decided to complete our 4 weeks as originally planned since we are making progress (and the sun came out). We are also supplementing with DuoLingo.

Ian & Ann