We only had a few hours in Antigua before we left for Lake Atitlán, so we went to Santo Domingo which was an old monastery ruin that was destroyed in the 1773 earthquake and has now been converted to a 5 star hotel with restaurants and museums. We walked around the courtyards and the museum, and had some coffee and breakfast at the restaurant. It was a really lovely way to spend a morning in Antigua, and we wish we had been able to stay longer.
But alas, we had to go back to the hotel to pack up our stuff, and our driver picked us up to take us on to the lake. Once we started getting closer to the lake, we had some pretty views of the highlands. We also saw tons of indigenous Mayans walking along the road, hard at work. We stopped in Pana to get our first good view of the lake and were completely blown away. I had seen pictures of the lake before the trip, but seeing it in person was so amazing.
Lake Atitlán is a crater lake, set between three different volcanoes. It is big and open, and 1100 ft deep in parts (isn’t that crazy?!). There are several different villages around the lake, some of which are only reachable by boat.
We stopped at a couple markets and a grocery store before heading to the boat dock to catch a boat shuttle to our house outside of San Marcos. There were a couple young kids who were so eager to help carry our luggage to the private boat, and one stayed on the shuttle with us to help when we arrived as well. The shuttle took around half an hour, of which we spent taking a million pictures of the same views over and over again.
We arrived at our private dock, and the young boy on our boat, and the property’s gardener took our luggage up to the house (which is like 100 steps from the dock) while we paid the boat captain.
The owner showed us around the house, and I was giddy with excitement. It is the nicest place we have ever stayed up to this point which is amazing for the price we paid for it.
The views of the lake and volcanoes were even better. Every room has a wall of windows offering amazing views.
We were quite content to spend the evening there rather than going exploring, so the owners had their chef come to the house to fix us an absolutely delicious arrival meal. She was a young Mayan woman from the village of San Marcos nearby and was very sweet and a fantastic cook. Her sister and baby nephew came to visit with her while she was cleaning up, and if you have never seen a Mayan baby, they are the cutest babies on earth with their giant brown eyes.
We spent some time outside on our terrace after dinner, and once the evening chill started kicking in, we went back in and started a fire.
You could still see the outline of the volcanoes across from us, and the lights from the village across the water allowed us to barely see the waves below us. We sat there, listening to music and drinking wine by the fire until we were ready to go to bed.
We have several villages around the lake we’d like to visit. I’m really thinking 5 days here won’t be enough.