We decided to take a tourist shuttle from Antigua directly to San Pedro on account of the fact public transport would required four buses and a boat and quite frankly fuck getting on and subsequently off five different transports whilst the muscles in my legs consisted entirely of pain and regret. Plus I couldn’t be arsed being potentially overcharged on five different transports when I could just hand over a set amount, fall asleep and drool onto my own shoulder for three hours. I’m starting to see the attraction of shuttles.

I knew the lake would be beautiful because everything I’d read said it would be but fucking hell, it is utterly fucking stunning! It’s an old, flooded volcanic crater, because of course it is, and it’s epic. Shits all over Laguna Apoyo in Nicaragua. I think our mistake was staying in San Pedro though, we’d read it was the party town but we’d stayed in many places reputed to be purveyors of The Fun and as long as we kept away from the known party hostels it was fine. Dear reader, it was not fine. It was noisy. The dogs for a start, don’t get me wrong, I adore their furry little faces but I wish they’d fucking shut them once in a while. Then the music starts. The music from the bars was so loud it could have been played by a man with a beatbox stood at the end of the bed. Fuck off, creepy beatbox man.

We weren’t happy with the accommodation we’d booked anyway. We spent a little bit more on a private room with our own bathroom but the shower didn’t work. Okay, that’s fine, we told them and they were really apologetic and promised they’d replace it that day. They did not. Plus the bed, mate, it was meant for two people but it was so tiny you could only realistically share it if neither of you moved. It’s a good job we’re very fond of each other isn’t it? We’d paid for five nights but eventually we cut our losses and moved to the other side of San Pedro after three nights to a lovely place where you couldn’t hear the bars, there were less dogs singing the song of their people, and the shower actually fucking worked.

The lack of sleep meant we were too tired to do huge amounts but we did squeeze in a couple of trips to other towns. San Marcos is renowned as the local hippy hang out so brace yourself for crystal healing, cacao ceremonies and yoga. I see cacao ceremonies advertised everywhere but I still don’t know what they are. I’m assuming something ancient and Mayan, potentially hijacked by white people with dreadlocks wearing flowing trousers with impractical pockets? No idea. The only cacao ceremony I’m interested in is ceremoniously adding brandy to my hot chocolate.

San Marcos is nice though, it does seem a lot more chilled here but I wouldn’t want to stay here I don’t think. It’s a little too quiet. It does have the little nature reserve you can swim at though. I mean, you’re going to see locals in all parts of the lake swimming and doing their laundry but this section has been kitted out with wooden benches and a ten metre high platform you can launch yourself off should you so choose. Dear reader, we did not. That’s a perfect way to do yourself a mischief. I was into that sort of shenanigans fifteen years ago but these days I’m far more aware of my own mortality, plus I tend to land tits first. Instead we found a bit with easy access to the water and slid in from there. Well, I slid in, Tarrant did her traditional “but it’s really cold” dance on the edge before taking the plunge. Usually she likes to ease herself in whilst making involuntary monkey noises but the rocks here don’t lend themselves to that.

We chilled here for a while and enjoyed the crater. It’s nice and peaceful despite it being popular. There are plenty of places for humans to just spread themselves out so we did practice the British art of glaring whilst remaining outwardly polite when an American family decided to set up right next to us. They did, however, recommended a decent place to eat, I’d been craving hummus and falafel and figured Hippy Central would be able to scratch that culinary itch. They suggested Moonfish which served us portions we could split into two and box up for dinner later. I got my chickpea product fix and all was well with the world.

We also visited San Juan and if we’d not already booked different accommodation in San Pedro I think we’d have moved here for our last two nights on account of the fact it’s fucking lovely, though I doubt it’d escape the nightly canine symphonies. There’s a popular sunrise hike you can do from here, The Indian Nose, but after Acatenango we’d decided if we couldn’t do it in flip flops we weren’t fucking doing it. You can easily pad up to the viewpoint overlooking the lake with… Well I’m not going to say with minimal effort because tell that to my poor calf muscles, but it’s paved the whole, brutally steep way so you can absolutely do it in footwear you have to keep in place with your toes.

Once you’re at the top there are blokes selling refreshments should you need to replace all that moisture that just gushed out of your face, and toilets should you need to offload said refreshments in a socially acceptable manner. We crossed paths with a group wearing backpacks with tents and sleeping bags strapped to the outside and I felt a pang of jealousy. Not over their kit, ours is much more sexy and lightweight and unreasonably expensive, but I reckon I could go another long distance hike sometime in the next couple of years. We wandered around the wooden viewpoint they’ve conveniently stuck up there and took it all in. It really is a beautiful part of the world.

Our knees were predictably horrified by the descent and I half regretted the decision to pretty much live in flip flops until we returned to the UK, then we went in search of a weaving cooperative. You don’t have to look far in San Juan, there are more than one of them, and we plumped for Casa Flor Ixcaco. I tried to explain in my horrible Spanish that we wanted to learn about the weaving process and the cooperative, and the lady replied in perfect English that she was happy to show us. Oh. Jolly good. Much easier yo understand in a language I actually speak.

Okay so cotton, it turns out, comes in five natural colours but that doesn’t mean you can dye the shit out of it. Of course, with this being traditional Mayan weaving and they didn’t have Dylon in ancient Mayan times they use natural dyes. They grow 20% of their cotton here, the other 80% is grown on the Pacific coast. Then it’s got to be picked, up to thirty seeds have to be removed by hand, the cotton is beaten and hand spun into thread. It can take fifteen hours to make a decent sized ball. Fucking hell, it sounds exhausting and we’ve not even got to the dying yet.

The dying is also quite the process. The leaves and flowers need to be soaked for twelve hours and seeds have to be crushed before the soaking. They use banana tree bark to fix the colours. The dye is heated and the thread is dipped; three to five minutes for lighter colours, up to ten minutes for darker colours but no more than that or you’ll weaken the thread. So you’re looking at nearly thirty hours of work before the woman even sits down with the backstrap loom. Suddenly $50 for an item of clothing doesn’t seem so expensive.

Our guide demonstrated how the loom worked and why it’s called a backstrap loom. Spoiler alert: It’s because you strap it around your lower back to keep it taut. Then you weave shit. For hours. Days. Weeks. In fact everything you can buy here has a tag with a photo of the weaver, which dyes were used, and how long it took her to make it. She’ll get paid for it as soon as she hands it to the cooperative, she doesn’t have to wait for it to sell, and she’ll get 80% of the value. The other 20% goes towards maintaining the shop front. It’s so fucking interesting and I’m really glad we came here.

Aside from shovelling pricey food and booze into your chops at restaurants of varying quality with lake views, other shit to do in San Pedro includes soaking in a vat of hot water at los termales. Despite the presence of more than one volcano don’t go thinking these are lovely, natural hot springs or you’ll be sorely disappointed, rather they’re concrete vats and if you give a bloke twenty minutes notice he’ll heat some water up for you to marinate in. Don’t forget to pop to the shops for some cold, cold beers to sip whilst you lounge in the hot, hot water. It’s fucking glorious, especially when all is your muscles fucking hate you because you walked up a volcano.

Lake Atitlán though, what a destination. You can definitely understand why it’s firmly on the Gringo Trail. Not only is it drop dead gorgeous it’s not disgustingly hot, it’s got a beautifully manageable climate, you can wander around in shorts and t-shirts in the day but you can actually sleep at night because the air isn’t lava. I’m looking at you, Flores. Mayan is spoken everywhere. Obviously Spanish is also spoken but when locals chat amongst themselves it’ll be Mayan you hear. I love how represented Mayan culture is in Guatemala, you’ll see women in traditional dress as well as hearing the language being spoken. Mayan hieroglyphs appear on the currency and sometimes you’ll see bilingual signage; Spanish and Mayan. This was the first time we’d heard it so widely spoken though.

We didn’t do as much here as we intended to on account of the lack of sleep but fuck it, we had a good time. We found an Australian owned cafe called No Hay Deer and pretty much spend our afternoons there drinking beer and rum and shovelling fries potatoes into our chops until the grease seeped out through our pores. Probably not the quintessential Guatemalan way to spend time but fuck it, we enjoyed it anyway.

Jump to “Useful shit to know…”

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Lake Atitlán, Sololá, Guatemala

Stayed at: Gran Colibrí – Tz’unun Ya’ Hostel Rec Center & Hotel Villa Del Lago, Gladys, San Pedro La Laguna

Useful shit to know…

Tourist Shuttle From Antigua To San Pedro

• You can take public transport from Antigua to the lake but it’s four buses.
• The total for the buses should be Q50 each but let’s assume you’ll be overcharged on that.
• You’ll need to go Antigua to Chimaltenango to Los Encuentros to Sololá to Panajachel, then take a boat to your town of choice.
• Shuttles from Antigua to Panajachel cost between Q100 and Q125, then you can take a lancha from there to the town of your choice.
• The lancha is meant to be Q25 but they’ll charge you whatever they want.
• Shuttles directly to other towns around the lake cost up to Q140.
• Casa Amarilla, Yellow House, only charge Q125 to take you all the way to San Marcos, San Juan or San Pedro so this is what we did.
• Shuttles leave at 9am and 2pm. They’ll pick you up from your accommodation.
• I think it took like 3.5 hours? I took a Dramamine as the road is very winding so I was asleep for most of it and very groggy when we arrived.
• We were dropped not too far from the boats.
• I think Q125 is excellent value for a direct transport service, especially assuming that you’ll be overcharged on the public transport so you’ll likely end up paying close to that anyway.

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• The lanchas from town to town shouldn’t be more than Q25 each but apparently they take great delight in charging foreigners whatever the fuck they like.
• If you’re going one way you pay the captain when you get off. Check the price before you get on.
• It’s cheaper to get a return. You’ll pay in advance in this case and you’ll be given a ticket. Keep it safe because when you come back you’ll need to hand that to the captain when you disembark.
• We heard loads of stories of having to argue to be charged the correct price but we never actually had this problem.
• We were charged Q25 each one way from San Pedro to Panajachel. Q30 each for San Pedro to San Marcos return. Q20 each for San Pedro to San Juan return.
• The day before we went to San Juan a guy was told it would be Q30 return to San Juan or Q20 one way by a different bloke to the one who sold us our ticket so it really does depend on who’s taking the money.
• We were quoted Q20 each to get to San Juan by tuk tuk.

• There are a few weaving cooperatives in San Juan, we chose Casa Flor Ixcaco.
• They charged us Q20 each to show us the process from removing seeds from cotton to the actual weaving with a backstrap loom.

• Entrance to the nature reserve in San Marco, Cerro Tzankujil, was Q20 each.

• Los Thermales cost Q60 each for an hour but if there’s only one of you it’ll cost Q120.
• Please be aware, whilst they’re relaxing and lovely they’re not natural or pretty or anything like that.
• You can bring your own beer to drink whilst you soak.