January 8, 2014

When Diego dropped me off yesterday, I made arrangements with him for today as I am checking out of EcoBambu. He arrived at 10 AM with the boat, picked up my luggage and took me to San Marcos. This is another one of the villages on the lake, very Zen/New Age. There are lots of yoga and massage training workshops and lots of very laid back non Guatemalan hippie looking types. I could not really find a place to get a massage (an idea I had) just walking around, so stopped in Fusion, a restaurant for lunch - cucumber, avocado, and cream cheese sandwich with French Vanilla coffee. As I was leaving I asked a couple sitting at the next table how their lunch had been and ended up talking with them for a while. They are fro Vancouver, she a retired teacher and he an artist. She was really interested in the volunteer work I had been involved with and asked for Cindy's contact information. We shared some Guatemala travel experiences and then I returned to find Diego. Next stop was Panajachel where I would spend the next two nights. He had carefully guarded my luggage. The ride was a bit rough and if I say the ups and downs in the boat were much worse than the worst horse-back riding experience I am not exaggerating. At one point I came down so hard I thought I was going to throw my back out (but didn't)

Diego helped get the luggage (and me) off the boat and up the stairs to the street. I walked the few blocks to Posada de Los Volcanes and checked in. After driving through Panajachel wen I arrived at the lake and seeing what little was here I could not bear the thought of spending the whole next day here. The hotel website had information about a highlands tour. I inquired about it and ended up booking it. Apparently Francisco who checked me in called around and I was the only person in Panajachel who wanted to do the tour so I had to pay for three people, the minimum. I walked up and down the main street here, filled with vendors selling handicrafts, many of which did not look so great (like woven Bart Simpson's for example.)

There are a couple of small museums that I visited, one with a small archaeology exhibit and a second part about some underwater discoveries made in the lake. Then I went to Museo Maya Azul, another small collection of old Mayan artifacts. The most fascinating to me was the last exhibit which showed how the Mayans drilled into people's teeth (like all the teeth) and inset jade and other gems there.

When I came out another woman was outside, the owner, who told me the admission price (not mentioned before) and said it included a free cup of coffee. So I sat down and spoke with her for awhile. Adriana speaks English beautifully. She told me the collection was her grandparents and that her parents, both dentists, were also pretty amazed at the exhibit about the teeth. She had been a dancer and visited Spain and Portugal touring with a group doing traditional Guatemalan dances. She had also lived in Taiwan for a year because she wanted to learn Mandarin. She was quite nice and interesting to speak with.

Back to the hotel to regroup before dinner. While I was in the lobby waiting to finalize tomorrow's tour, a man was sitting there and we spoke. Jeff, originally from Wellington, NZ, now lives in Australia and is married to an Australian woman. They and their two children have been on a 5 week Central America trip which started in Cuba, then to Panama and will finish soon in Mexico. He was telling about the trip, their various modes of travel including private car and bus. He had some really good things to say about travel to Cuba and I know this is the time to go before changes occur with the new US foreign policy changes.

I went out for dinner to an Italian restaurant, The Lantern, in one of the hotels. It was subdued and quiet with few other guests. It was nice to be away from the craziness on the main street. All the pasta is reportedly hand-made - I had lasagna and a glass of wine and was very content with that.

Back to the hotel, the end of another Guatemalan day.