Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Our next stop in Guatemala was Lake Atitlan. It is a lake at 5000 feet surrounded by several volcanos. We stayed at the town of San Pedro La Laguna which is a 3 hour drive from Antigua on a really curvy road that gets as high as 10,000 feet. The lake has several little towns along the shore and because of the steep geography, a lot of the transportation between towns is done by small boats. It makes a great isolated feel and uniqueness for each town similiar to living on an island. From the moment we got there we were awed by the beauty of the lake and its incredible views of the mountains along the shore. Sunsets and sunrises were amazing.

My old high school and college friend Karl has retired to San Pedro several years ago and lives there with his wife Tamila. They were fantastic tour guides and showed us around several of the different villages. They are very proud of their lake and town and it was fantastic to see their enthusiasm for sharing it with us. Karl has a lot of fun stories about his time traveling the world and doing long distance hikes like the Appalachian Trail and the Camino De Santiago. They also introduced us to their local and expat friends so we got a really good feeling of expat life. Our current life as expat nomads is missing the neighborhood expat community that Karl and Tamila have in Guatemala. There are about 1000 foreigners in San Pedro out of 18,000 people and they seemed to know most of them as we walked through town. We do have our online nomad community with frequent meetups in other countries but it is not the same as their San Pedro connections. It is tempting to settle down for longer stays and make deeper friendships than our current nomad life allows. But for the next few years at least, we are still having fun seeing the world.

San Pedro La Laguna is one of the main tourist towns and has a lot of the younger hostel crowd in the center of the village mixed with some older expats along the edges of town. The party hostels and bars downtown were bumping with loud music every night but somehow quieted down around 10 or 11pm. There were many restaurants in the village and we never had a bad meal. Lots of variety of Guatemalan as well as international food that were all priced affordably.

They took us to the neighboring village of San Juan which has recently become a tourist hotspot for Guatemalans as well as some foreigners. Their mayor has cleaned it up and encouraged murals, street decorations, colorful painting of buildings as well as several tourist related businesses. We visited and got mini tours of chocolate making, textile weaving, and honey production. We saw many art galleries and were tempted to purchase some of the amazing art even though our small Seattle townhouse doesn’t have any empty walls.

One day, we went on a private boat tour of the whole lake with Karl and Tamila and see more of the villages. We could see the coffee farms on the slopes of the volcanos along the lake and could see how the locals lived. We saw fancy houses belonging to richer expats and beach houses of the Guatemalan city elite buisness people. We saw the town of San Marcos which is the most “hippy” community of the lake with may young foreigners hanging out on the beach doing what hippies do. We stopped at the town of San Lucas Toliman which is more of a locals town with very few foreigners. We saw their working market and then got to see a small church where they worship along with the Catholic Jesus, the Mayan “God” of Maximon. Karl likened it to a “Vice Jesus” where the locals ask for forgiveness for their vices to the life-size Maximon doll that gets dressed with many different outfits. We had great timing to see a man blowing cigar smoke past Maximon dressed like a 1970’s pimp while someone recited all the bad things they had recently done. We saw offerings of cigarettes and alcohol on the altar along with flowers and other goods. I have never seen something like this before. Really cool and weird and I was able to sneak a couple of pictures even though I wasn’t supposed to.

We stayed in a small Airbnb without a kitchen right on the lake. Great sunrise and sunsets from the deck but it was really more like “glamping” than a traditional Airbnb. We really enjoyed our time with Karl and Tamila and enjoyed our time on the lake. We can see ourselves coming back and staying for a much longer stay some day. The lake town atmosphere is so reminiscient of the small island type communities that allow a laid back lifestyle. We were jealous of Karl and Tamila’s community but right now we still have many more countries to explore. Next stop is a new country for us- Colombia.