ODO: 320,405
There are several small to medium sized towns around the lake with the fastest access to each being water taxi. They’re actually more like water busses. You wave them down from your dock, hop on and tell the driver where you want to get off. And then you hang on! They rage across the lake, smashing over the small waves. It’s pretty violent. We take one over to San Juan la Laguna to go for a little explore. There were a couple of very cute painted and decorated streets that we wander around before finding a cafe for lunch. The curry is amazing. The French fries are amazing. The burger is amazing. The lemonada is amazing. Happy and full, it’s time to visit the store that brough us to this town: Lema Association. They sell local yarn. Finding yard for KoKo’s Sweater of the America’s is turning into an adventure of it’s own. Along the way a small cat becomes our best friend, and KoKo wants to keep him, but, sadly, having a cat in the truck is not what we’re looking for right now. On our boat ride back we see another volcano erupting. Apparently that is such a regular occurrence here that it doesn’t make news, and no one else seems to care or notice. But we do, and we’re excited.
Shore power round 2, and this time it works! Now we dont have to run the truck for long periods of time while we’re parked, woooo! KoKo has a friend that spends most of the year living in the area, so we hop a water taxi over to his town for a late lunch. He takes us to a delicious restaurant, and a walk along the water front. The final water taxi of the day (at 5:00pm) takes us home. We return to discover our shore power is no longer working. Hmphf. Cue the nightly rainstorm!
We’ve learned the warmest part of the day here is the morning. The boats are also a lot more casual in the morning, which makes it the perfect time for a swim. The water is tropical blue and refreshingly cool. The shore drops off quickly so the only good way in is to jump off the dock, and jump we do! Berne first though because KoKo doesn’t get in the water by herself. Scary. We spend the morning jumping and diving off the dock, enjoying the cool water, and warming up on the wooden dock. Back in our camp spot we spend the cloudy afternoon getting work done. The third town we explore is the one walking distance from where we are staying. We make our way through the narrow alley ways to a pizza place with a tiny wood fired pizza oven and a big sleepy dog. This is by far the best pizza we’ve had since we left. As we start our walk home the daily rain starts. We catch our first tuk tuk of the trip and it zips us through the rainy darkness back to our campground.
After a week at Lake Atitlan it’s time for us to start exploring the east side of Guatemala. The part we skipped when we hustled to make our flight to the Bay Area. First up: Semuc Champey. Our journey starts with some stress as we get turned around in town trying to navigate our way through the small, narrow streets, but we manage. Next we drive along a stretch of highway with a dog relaxing in the ditch every ten feet or so for 15-20 minutes. And all different types of dogs! It was a very cute stretch of road. Today happens to be Guatemalan Independence day and as we continue into the afternoon we start to see lots of water fight celebrations. There are people waiting on the side of the road with plastic bags and buckets full of water to throw on the passing local vehicles, including the chicken buses. Being not locals, we are not included in the country wide water fight until night falls and it becomes harder to tell we aren’t local. We’re not sad to be included. The other interesting thig that happened once night fell is that the fire runners, as we call them, came out. They are groups of people running flaming torches from town to town. Running. Between the towns. Our drive took us from 9800ft to 390ft and back to 8000ft, and not gently. And people were running these hills. We spent the entire day in second gear, the hills are so steep. Other than the elevation changes, the road is in pretty great shape, no potholes, just really twisty, so we drive late, late into the night. The road is so twisty that darkness doesn’t slow us down at all. After 11pm a nice gentleman at a nice hostel opens his gate for us, and we try to get some rest for the night.
The hostel offers us breakfast. The choices are eggs however you want, and beans. Fueled up, we start the second half of our drive to Lanquin, the town outside Semuc Champey. We tour every camp spot in Lanquin, and all we find is a delicious restaurant run by a British chef. We have a delicious mid day meal while we figure out where to look next. There is a hostel just out of town that sounds nice so that is our next stop. The road is very steep, even by Guatemalan standards. The main lodge is lovely, with a view across the jungle, and there is a very friendly cat. The camp spot, however, is less exciting. It is a small spot in what looks to be an outdoor garage. Being late in the day, and having seen all the other options, this is our winner. After some cleaning and reorganizing, the heat gets to us, so it’s time for a relax. The lower elevations are very hot and very humid, and we may have forgotten that while we were at the lake.
It turns out we are indeed camped in an outdoor garage. We are woken very early by the sounds of wood being unloaded from a truck and then a saw starting up. Luckily we have work to do, so we head into the main lodge to use their internet. In addition to the cat, this lodge has twelve dogs. They can be found mostly laying around, melting from the heat. The hostel offers a dinner service, and since the lodge is much nicer than our camp spot, we give it a try. The night’s menus is cauliflower soup, veggie lasagna, garlic bread, salad and carrot cake for dessert. One of us loves carrot cake, so this is exciting. Dinner is great according to one of us, and medium according to the other, but we both like dessert. Full, and still too warm we head back to our tiny house for the night. Our sleep is disrupted by a dog digging in our garbage. This is the first time this has happened on our adventure. That’s pretty amazing since we irresponsibly leave our trash out every night. We clean up the mess and head back to bed.
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