After a night in Antigua, we headed to Lake Atitlan, infamous for it´s beauty, for a couple of days to relax (not that the past couple of days hadn´t been a delight..), so back to the chicken buses we went. We shot down the road once more, overtaking every other form of vehicle, and flying over the bumps. While waiting to change buses, Mandy attempted ro use a toilet. Well toilet may be a bit of a stretch... Cess pit would suit better. She stepped into the room, and her thong-clad foot went straight into a 2/3 inch puddle of urine! I mean really... Anyway after many more chicken buses, plus the help of a friendly Italian, and a dash across a park we got to Panajachel, a beautiful market town right on the shore of Lake Atitlan. For dinner that night we went to the world´s slowest restaurant - we were waiting for nearly 2 hours! They had yummy licuado´s though, which passed the time nicely. However when the food came, it weren´t so great... Myself and Jason´s were essentially bowls of salt - mine with boiled cream, and his with pasta on the side. I wouldn´t have been surprised had we woken up hungover... There was also this very stange man there, alone, who was devoid of the most basic social skills - he moved over to our table uninvited, and ate food off of Mandy and Jason´s plate! And he would not stop talking, telling us about his divorce, and how he wasn´t aggressive enough... ....

The next day Lily woke early, although I use "woke" in the loosest sense of the term possible, having been drifting in and out of consciousness sice the demd rooster started crowing. Literally just give me a sawn off shotgun and 5 minutes...But we hopped up perky, because today was rad bargain attaining, budget blowing day hooray! We trawled the markets all day which was amazing! Lily got lots of delightful items, and subsequently haemmorrhaged money all day, or, as Jason put it "single handledly supported the Guatemalan market stalls." Happily though our haggling hats were firmly on, so these gringoes were saved from being ripped off (for once). We walked down to the water edge where a beautiful sight awaited us... Volcan Atitlan rising high from the lake! It is actually the picture of the front of our guide books. However we discovered that however lovely it may seem, due to the considered unimportance of treating raw sewage/taking care of your country in any way there are parasites in the lake and so swimming is verboten. Dinner that night was deelish, and we were once more surrounded by the usual menagarie of (probably rabies-ridden) pupinas thanks to Mandy´s care for them.

We woke on friday early again so that we could make it over to San Pedro - a town on the other side of the lake. It´s a shame we didn´t get here earlier as we would all have loved to stay longer - if only we´d skipped out the disease-ridden Granada! Once in the water taxi we chuttered out from the dock, got about 100m, did a U-turn and back in we went. Quick trip we thought, cutting out the middle man of actually visiting the town! About 8 Mayan woman got piled on, and then off we went again. After they´d got off, the driver told us that they were all going to the dentist. He then revealed that he neither brushes his teeth, nor visits the dentist because "it hurts." Very nice. San Pedro was a really nice little town with massive volcano peaks rising in the distance. We found an amazing coffee shop using locally grown beans which was yummy! We headed back to Panajachel after that to pack up in time for our shuttle back to Antigua - we didn´t think we could face more chicken buses. If we thought it was to be an uneventful ride though we were wrong.. After about half an hour the back bumper fell off, of course. Luckily that happened outside a mechanics, so out he popped and welded it back on, wearing absolutely no protective clothing (need you even ask??). And we passed this pickup truck which had the most ridiculously dangerous set up - there was no back to the trunk bit, just a bar across, and there was a guy chilling out in it on a garden chair! Should there have been an accident, or better yet should the driver brake he´d fly straight out the back into the oncoming traffic!

And back we were in Antigua (yay) for a couple of days, which were also our last days with Jason and Mandy sob!