Lake Atitlan Adventure...

We just spent 2 full days visiting Lake Atitlan in Panajachel. We had an awesome time. Lake Atitlan is a gorgeous lake. The views are beautiful and we were able to spend some time learning about the culture and meeting the people who live around the lake. It's about a 2.5 hour drive from Antigua. Early Sunday morning the shuttle picked us up and we arrived at the lake around 10am. We checked into our hotel and hung out by the pool and palm trees- the weather was perfect as usual.

From there we headed to lunch overlooking the lake and walked around the city of Panajachel. Most of the people here are indigenous Mayans who speak only Mayan dialects. Later in the day, we headed to Pana Rock (just like Hard Rock!) to watch the superbowl. What a bummer of a bowl! It was a good game but just like our Red Sox passion, we are BIG patriot fans!

Monday was a long day...but well worth it. We got up, had breakfast at the hotel and then met the boat tour operator to leave for the lake. We headed out on the lake to visit 4 villages: San Marcos, San Pedro, San Juan, and Santiago. Wow- they were amazing. We really got a sense of what these villages are like. They are very poor and there is little, if any economy (other than tourism) that exists within these villages. Most of the natives survive on tourism through selling fruit, vegetables, and tortillas. There was some beautiful architecture and the views of the lake from these villages were stunning. Our favorite was San Marcos and San Juan...they were both very quaint little villages with extremely interesting history. While visiting San Juan, school had finished for the day and so we got to meet all the school children...who, of course, were adorable and so happy to see the baby, too. They gathered around Nate in the stroller like they hd never seen a baby before; it was really cute.

We then headed back to Pana and caught the 4pm shuttle back to Antigua. Nate was perfect in the shuttle. The ride is not for the faint of heart and he was such a trooper. If you are afraid of heights or extremely fast driving over bumpy roads through indian villages- this ride may not be for you. But we all did fine and it was a great trip.

Here are some pics from our adventure...