Lake Atitlan

The group chartered a boat to tour around Lake Atitlan this morning. Our first stop was a beautiful bed and breakfast for breakfast. The food was awesome, as was the view of the surrounding volcanos and the gardens. We spent close to an hour just relaxing and taking it all in.

The second stop was to visit Maximon, the fabled effigy said to be a combination of Mayan and Spanish deities. He's revered and cared for by the traditional Mayan villages, with people leaving donations of rum and cigarettes (and helping the wooden statue to smoke them) for good blessing. We then went to the church in the same town, where behind the alter is a stone carving depicting people honouring Maximon (meaning that he's been around for a few hundred years), though the people who attend this church don't visit him.

Our final stop was a village where our guide D's extended family still lives and owns a bakery. The family was very inviting, giving us free fresh bread (delicious!) and letting us in their house so that D could show us some pictures of his grandfather.

The lake got rougher as the day wore on, so it was a bumpy and slightly wet ride back to Panajachel where we got on a van and left for Antigua. Antigua served as Guatemala's capital city for more than 200 years until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1772. Today, it's a peaceful, partially restored colonial city. After settling into our rooms, D gave us an orientation tour through the quiet cobblestone streets, then we enjoyed a restaurant serving traditional Guatemalan foods - I had gallo en chica, a rooster cooked in a tomato, onion, and spice sauce, served on a banana leaf.