Lake Atitlán

We left Antigua and travelled on a very windy road (we all felt sick 🤢) through the mountains and volcanoes to reach a huge 50 square mile freshwater ‘caldera’ lake called Lake Atitlan. We have since learnt all about volcanoes and calderas! 

There are many small villages on the edge of Lake Atitlan  that are overlooked by enormous dramatic volcanoes, several of which are still active. As you can imagine, I had several wake-ups in the middle of the night worrying about earthquakes and volcanoes erupting, whilst we are ‘trapped’ in our flimsy breeze block buildings beside the lake that is only inhabitable by small boats! 

We stayed in several of the small indigenous villages, all of which had a very different feel, one of which being a very ‘hippy’ commune! During our time in hippy-ville (more like wannabe hippies who purchased their fisherman’s pants on the way in to the village), we decided we would like to experience something ‘hippy’ so we popped along to something called ‘K ‘. It was a lovely experience where we sat in a circle around a fire that Iinitially started with a short meditation, followed by a man playing a guitar and chanting. None of the chants we knew to start with, but after about 10 minutes of chanting the same thing, we could soon join in. Of course, me and Tristan started uncontrollably laughing at the  whole experience at the start, but we soon settled 😳, and chanted merrily to Shiva and Hare Krishna. I’m super proud that all the family embraced the experience but don’t  ask if Seb if he enjoyed it, as his head was buried for a lot of it!! Also, we don’t mention the fire, as after Johnny watched some guys ‘make’ a fire, he decided to offer some help (don’t do it like that, do it like this, I was a scout don’t you know), the whole tranquil event nearly ended in a massive brawl in this ‘peaceful hippy session!

All of the accommodation and restaurants were largely run by local Guatemalans which was great, but Lake Atitlan was largely a touristy area. It was a great place to spend a few days where we jumped off big rocks into the lake, kayaked, went on enormous zip-lines, ate good food in lots of nice restaurants) 

We also visited a textiles co-operative where we were able to observe how the local communities grew, picked, spun and dyed cotton, and then went on to make some absolutely beautiful wares.