Guatemala 2025 - Days Five And Six - Lake Atitlán

Friday - 02/14 - Arriving to Lake Atitlán

We left the market in Solola and drove to Guatemala's second largest lake, Lake Atitlán.  On the way we stopped at a viewpoint.  From here you could see the volcanoes on the south side of the lake.  In the middle of the picture are the twin volcanoes of Atitlán and Tolimán.  To the right of those is the volcano of San Pedro.  The lake itself is a collapsed caldera and is very deep.  The viewpoint also had vendor stalls and we bought a few treasures.

Lake Atitlán and its volcanoes.

We left the viewpoint and headed to our hotel on the shores of the lake.  We were too early to check in so we had some lunch out on the veranda overlooking the pool and lake.  As we ate a pretty good lunch several helicopters came in and dropped off guests with their luggage.  Nothing says 'Income Gap' like arriving at your hotel in a helicopter.

The view from our balcony.

We checked in and went to our room.  Our room's balcony looked out over the lake, pool, and the extensive hotel gardens.  We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the gardens admiring the flowers, going to the water's edge and dipping our fingers in (it was a cold lake), and chilling at the bar.

Saturday - 02/15 - A boat ride around the lake.

There are eleven towns and villages on the shore of the lake.  We would be visiting three.  The first was Panajachel.  Panajachel is a tourist place and we didn't spend much time here.  We parked our van, took a Tuk Tuk (something introduced to Guatemala after I left) to the harbor, and got on our boat.

One of the many San Juan la Laguna murals.

A short boat ride took us to San Juan la Laguna.  Several of the towns around the lake compete for tourism quetzales and San Juan is no different.  The town has decorated its streets with murals, bright colors, and hanging street decorations.  The mural artists from around the lake are famous and do commissioned work all over Guatemala.

Decorated streets.

After visiting some of the better murals we stopped at a cooperative where we learned about the local Mayan weavers.  I left with a hand woven T-shirt.  From there we went to a chocolate factory where we learned about cacao.  The Wife discovered that white chocolate is not really chocolate (I've told her before but it took a Mayan chocolatier to convince her).  We tasted various levels of dark chocolate.  The dark chocolate in Guatemala is sweeter than in the American dark.  I would say 80% Guatemalan chocolate is about the same as 70% in the states.  I tried 100% which was obviously bitter but not nearly as bad as I expected.  We left with some white chocolate, 70%, and 80% bars.

We returned to our boat and went to a town that we added to our itinerary, Santiago Atitlán.  The Wife wanted to visit the church here where the heart of an American martyr is kept.  Stanley Rother, known as Padre Apla to the local Mayan people, ran the mission in Guatemala from 1968 to 1981 when he was murdered by the Guatemalan army who accused him of rendering aid to the rebels.  In 2017 he was beatified by Pope Francis.

We returned to our boat, returned to Panajachel, and tuk tuked back to our van.  We left the lake and headed to our next destination, the city of Antigua.

Pictures can be found in my 2025-02 Guatemala Google Photos album.