Lago Atitlan

Last Friday, February 4th, we decided to Antigua for a little rest and relaxation before school started the following Monday. We chose to go to Panajachel, Guatemala; a lake-side town with a big mercado and great volcano views.We took the local chicken at 7 am and of course there were double the amount of people as there was space (we´re talkin 5 people to a seat on a bus that is meant to hold 2...) but we got there none the less in about 3 hours. When we arrived, we had no idea where we were going to stay but we saw a sign for the Bahia Vision Azul and it said they offered camping.We took one of the little three-wheel, lawn mower engine taxi cabs to the hotel to check it out. We were absolutely blown away when we got there! It was about 3 km outside of the town so it was a seculded little campground with trees, grass, a pool, a hotel, a restaurant, bathrooms, hot water showers, and one of the best views we had ever seen. We originally set up camp back from the water because there was already people that looked like they had the prime real-estate. Just when we got our tent up, they started to pack up, so we didn´t unload our backpacks and waited for them to leave and then scooped the spot! We set up camp again on the best location offered and began our ´vacation´ by sitting by the pool all day with a couple of beers, potato chips and black beans. It was one of the best days yet!

The next day, we started the day off by swimming in the pool and then we hiked into town for some water. We also walked through the huge market that was selling tradicional Guatemalan clothing, jewlery, toys, etc. We saw a sign for the ¨Playa Publica¨- public beach, and went searching. After about an hour of walking we discovered that the public beach was really just the market that we were at earlier, but it is by the water, so obviously that constitutes a public beach... There was no sand, no swimming, just shops! We went back to our little campground and rented some kayaks for about an hour and set sail. The rest of the day was just as relaxing as the first so we decided to go out into the town to see when their Saturday nights were like. There were two bars that looked like they had all of the buisness; a local one and a tourist one. We felt like just having a beer and not speaking in Spanish so we chose the tourist bar.There was a band playing with a GREAT guitarist and a really bad singer and drum player, but they were playing classic rock like the Eagles, so we couldn´t complain too much. After about an hour we hiked back to our campground to find a huge dinner party with a loud, live DJ. We were pretty tired, so we just went to our tent and went to bed, luckily they shut the music off at exactly 10 p.m. The next day, we woke up early to head back to Antigua on another way-too-crowded bus that took us about 1/6th of the way. We found out that it was ¨market day¨so they didn´t run buses directly to Antigua; we had to keep switching, never really knowing where we were going (that is always half the fun) but we eventually made it back in about 5 hours.