We seem to be waking up earlier and earlier while we are here, eager to get the day started. On our 8th day in Guatemala, we were awake by 5:30am, cooked breakfast, cleaned up, got ready, and ventured on down to our canoe.
The day before, we had taken our waterproof camera out on the canoe just in case anything happened. The water had been so smooth and calm though, that this time, we decided to go ahead and bring our good camera. We made it about 50 meters before realizing the waves were way too rough and dangerous to have the good camera on us, so we turned back around and let said waves help us back along to our dock. I held on to the ladder on the dock with one hand so that the canoe and myself didn’t go floating away, and with the other hand, I held my oar out against the dock to keep the canoe from continuously bashing up against it. I sat there like this while wave after wave came crashing into me while Anthony took the camera up the hundred stairs to our house. I was getting quite the abs and arms workout. Anthony decided to take his sweet time so that I was nice and frazzled by the time he came back down with the waterproof camera.
Being… I don’t know, insane I guess, we decided we still wanted to canoe. So we went back out, paddling away. Everytime I tried to get a picture, a giant wave came toward us. The locals on shore were staring at us, probably repressing the urge to laugh. It felt like we were canoeing in the ocean. But we just kept on keeping on.
But then we saw a lancha approaching… and another lancha approaching from behind us. Freaking great. We could feel the canoe being pushed toward the stony shore, so we kept paddling backwards while the water kept knocking us around. It may not sound like it, but we’re pretty smart individuals- we know you’re supposed to turn into the waves… but that’s a little difficult when they are coming at you from every side. We managed to back out enough to avoid a crisis, and finally decided that it was time to give up and head back. I had been feeling like Pocahontas in that “Just Around the Riverbend” scene during all this, so I was pretty sad that we didn’t make it around the bend to find Grandmother WIllow.
Once that fun was over, we gave ourselves a small break and then decided to go on to a village on the lake we hadn’t seen yet- Santiago Atitlan.
Apparently this was more difficult than I was expecting. We got dropped off at the dock in San Pedro and were told to walk about 10 minutes down the road to a different dock. So we walked to the end of the road, and there was nothing there. We asked a woman working at a store, and she said to go down the alley by her store and then turn left, and it’d be about 15 minutes. So then we just kept on like that with this maze of roads and alleys. Every time we reached a dead end, we would ask someone the way, and every time, “Si, down that road”.
Eventually, we made it only to be told that the lancha wouldn’t be leaving for 45 minutes. We backtracked a bit and stopped at a restaurant with the view below and had a beer, then went back.
The water was even choppier than when we had taken the canoe out. A different lancha pulled in, completely unable to be controlled and nearly wrecked into ours. Then it was our turn to venture out in the waves.
The first couple minutes were kind of fun. We kept hitting huge waves, and everyone would laugh a bit like we were on a roller coaster. But then it just kept getting worse. Our little boat was being tossed all around, and each time we crashed into a giant wave, a gush of water would come flying in at us. You know those scenes in movies of boats caught in a huge storm at sea? That’s about what we looked like. The boat needed to be turned one way to face the waves, but we needed to go a different way to get to Santiago. The captain did a bit of a zigzag dance, trying to turn into the big waves, and then turn the boat for a few seconds toward shore, and so on. I started looking around and noticed that even the locals were looking worried. I started forming my plan of what we would do if we tipped over, but we were way out from shore.
We were finally able to turn into the cove where Santiago is located, nestled between the volcanoes. The water was much calmer there, so I started breathing more easily. Anthony asked one of the locals if it was always like that, and he shook his head emphatically. “No, normalmente es mas tranquilo.” No, it’s usually calmer.
Forgetting about the near death experience (for my camera and phone at least) of the boat ride, Santiago is beautiful. It is the largest village on the lake and is almost entirely indigenous.
Once you get off the dock, there is a street full of little markets and colorful shops.
A boy walked us up to the top, giving us a little bit of information on the town and showed us to a tuk tuk, who took us through town and over to a restaurant and hotel on the bay. Trucks packed full of indigenous Mayans, usually all girls or all boys, kept driving by.
The restaurant was nice, and the bathroom stalls had notices of the different famous people who had been there. Reba McEntire was the only name I really recognized, but the last one on the list made me laugh:
We were going to tour the town a bit more, but having that lancha ride back to San Pedro hanging over my head, I knew I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself until I got it over with. So we went back down to the dock to get on the lancha.
It was completely packed full. We managed to get on and sit, but after that there was zero space left on the benches, and the front of the boat had 2 baskets full of live chickens. But then some rather large woman decided she was going to climb on anyway. The locals next to me were trying to say it was too full, but she sat down with the chickens. They all looked at each other and started kind of smiling and reaching at the life vests ahead of them, jokingly (ish). I had a little Mayan boy next to me staring out at the waves, obviously excited.
In general, it was going more smoothly than the way there. The first big wave we hit, the little boy shrieked and yelled “Me gusta!” and started laughing. Once he realized that I was completely terrified, he kept laughing at me, having the time of his life.
We started approaching San Pedro and were so close when suddenly, the boat was tipping, everyone was sliding to one side, yelling “Woah!”, and then… the boat steadied itself again. Huge sigh of relief. We made it to the dock, and Anthony and I found our way back through town to the other dock, still having two more lanchas to go. As is, we were feeling a little unsteady on our feet.
The lancha to San Marcos was not quite as bad. We still got sprayed a little, and the captain had to do some dancing around the waves, and there was one point where we stopped for some reason, and then we noticed there was some completely insane person swimming out there.
We ate dinner in San Marcos at another veg-friendly restaurant. San Marcos has really grown on me. It’s definitely a bit gimmicky with all its New Age-ness, but the restaurants are yummy and picturesque, and it just seems so much calmer and more peaceful than San Pedro. We paid quickly to catch the last lancha heading the direction of our house.
When we climbed on the lancha, we noticed everyone on it who had come from San Pedro was wearing a life vest. And there were no life vests left. Anthony, looking and sounding a little worried, asked them in Spanish why they were all wearing life vests which made them all laugh. Because of the giant waves, of course!
When we were telling this story to our host and her guests during drinks later, they were incredulous. In the 8 years they had lived on the lake, they had not once seen an indigenous person put a life vest on. Yet here we were, an entire boatful of them with life vests on.
As the lancha pulled out and toward our house, we kept getting sprayed by the cold water and everyone would shriek and laugh, and Anthony joked around with all the locals on board. We stopped in the middle of the water, again, and the old Mayan woman next to me said to Anthony, “No hay bastante gasolina,” (There’s not enough gasoline) and then laughed. Funny woman. The lancha started up again, and we were back on our way, her sharing her shawl with me to help block the cold water. When we got to our dock, they were all jokingly asking Anthony in Spanish if they could get off there with us.
Feeling very relieved to be back on solid ground and to be done with lanchas on this ridiculously windy day, we ran up the steps to our house and got cleaned up. I contacted the paragliding company to see if we would be able to go paragliding the next day, but of course, it’s too windy and dangerous right now.
Our hosts had invited us down to their house for drinks that evening because they had some house guests they thought we would like to meet. It was two women who had written a book about charity in Guatemala. One of them had lived in Kansas when she was younger and knew my home town. She now lives at the lake part time and Colorado part time. We all went through several glasses of wine, discussing politics, travels, and charity while the sun set and darkness descended.
It was a really pleasant evening, and they were all fascinating people who had traveled all over the world and met and interviewed incredible people. But it was getting late, and we had to get up early the next morning to hike a volcano, so we climbed back up to our own home and crashed.