After a few weeks of learning Spanish, I booked a trip to Lake Atitlan as a celebration of learning again. Said goodbye to some friends at the hostel and jumped on a shuttle to the lake. Specifically a town on the lake called San Pedro.
Instantly, the shuttle was full of fellow travelers and a new set of friends was born. The drive out to the Lake was filled with beer drinking and story swapping. The standard: where are you from, how long you traveling for, age, yada yada. After you pass that level, then the good stories come out once people know each other. A quick example of a story is this UK kid got slipped a pill and had some nervous reaction to the drug and watched his right hand wrist loose all control. Now, his hand is paralyzed for life (well, until he flys back home and gets some serious surgery on it. Pretty messed up.
Anyways after a few hours of driving, climbing up and down mountains, we finally arrived overlooking this lake. At that point, the drive down to the lake took about an hour. If you remember the Mazda "zoom zoom" commercials, these roads would put it to shame. Every corner coming down was a switch back. Finally, we arrived in San Pedro.
At this point on the shuttle we had about 11 people who were all friends and no hostel to stay out. We jumped off the bus and got a nice settle bombarding of locals trying to sell us hostel information. Since this town is very small all of the well known hostels get full each night. Its 8 pm. so we already screwed for those options. This dude took us on some trek, in and out of some sketchy thin alleyways. If that guy disappeared we would all be lost. We arrived at some shitty looking hostel that was marketed for $1.50 a night. We were stoked but they only had 2 rooms available so we took off for the next place. Next stop was a upgrade to $3.00 a night so we booked it. Settled in and went off for food and drinks. Ate some fish and we all got lost coming back to the hostel. I say this b/c the town isn't your average one way street, its all rape valley looking alleyways. Once you think you find your way out, theres another tiny road that links to another one. Like I said, a perfect place to get robbed or like they call it "rape valley".
Anyways, we partied that night, found some weird hippy bars (San Pedro is a hippie, expat town) and called it a night.
Next day woke up to this incredible view overlooking the lake. Volcanoes surrounding us and cold, clear water...and no one in it. To my surprise there were no flashy boats, jet skis, or any commotion in the water. Which was good.
For the next few days, all you do is go from smoothie shop to the next, eating cheap food then drinking cause there wasn't much to do. One of the days we headed to the town San Marcos (other side of the lake). Even more of a hippie town. Filled with massages, shaman readers, and acid. You can walk the town in about 1 minute. Speak with locals to buy fruit from them, while watching some gringo hippie juggle bowling pins in the air behind them. Quite strange, hard not to laugh at them, but a general twilight feeling. Pretty fun for one day.
Back to San Pedro. Cheap, good food but nothing to do. We made the best of it but I couldn't take it any longer. I booked my shuttle back to Antigua. When you go to an incredible city with everything to offer and then switch it over to a small hippie town, its quite a shock.
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