Believe it or not, we are now used to getting up before the sun does, and today was no execption, with our alarms set for 5:45 am to catch the 7am bus to the lake. Who says travelling is easy?
The whole western (and central) part of Guatemala is mountanous, meaning that it takes forever to get from one place to another, but also that you get spectacular views out of your old rickety window. And so we chugged along up and down the mountaintops until we reached Panajachel, the most touristy town on the lago the Atitlan.
The lake is AMAZING it actually reminds us a lot of Lac Leman in Suisse, except that this lake is surrounded by 3 majestic volcanos of more than 3000 meters each, and dotted with little pueblos all around. We walked around the waterfront a bit and ate the cheapest meal of our trip so far (2 USD for some beef plate and a drink) in a tiny street stall with a great scenic view.
We found ourselves the cheapest room of our trip so far (4.5 USD per person) at the hotel San Francisco and then set out to fulfull our ambitions of renting bikes for the week and biking all around the lake (with our 15kg backpacks).
Well, after receiving some information of the negative kind we decided to change our plans a bit, since theres no road circling the lake. So we decided to bike to a few villages today, then tomorrow take the boat to the opposite side of the lake and bike around a few villages there, and then repeat the day after.
We rented our bikes for the week and we were on our way. We decided to take it easy today and bike to the 2 villages preceding Pana, which were Santa Caterina and San Antonio. Well, being poor backpackers we rented the cheapest bikes available, which, of course means bikes without working gears, twisted pedals and seats made of volcanic rock. It turns out that the coastal roads were only classified as such because you could see the water if you looked down 1oo meters or so. So the 45 mintue bike to Sta Caterina consisted of going up and down more than expeced, which in the end we succeded in doing, dying many times in the process.
We then cooled off with a beer on the Sta. Catarina pier, watching the fishermen mend one of their boats. Its amazing how few tourists there are just one town away, and we really got to see the local way of life. This whole region is inhabited mostly by the indigenous people, or ex-mayas, still dressing in their colorful blue and purble clothing and speaking an intelligible dialect.
We then biked halfway to San Antonio where we died a few more times and decided it was best to return home before dark. Well, we had time to think about our bike mission while we were frantically pedaling to scale the hills back to Pana. When we reached Pana we came to the conclusion that these 3 hours of biking were enough for our week and we quickly returned the bikes and got our money back (blaming it on the faultiness of our bikes, of course, instead of our legs).
A roadside taco dinner (1 USD) and a disguisting black russian at the Pana Rock bar sent us straight to sleep in our windowless room, which I'm sure had meters of mold hidden behind the bright yellow wall paint.
No comments:
Post a Comment