After finishing our Semester at Sea voyage, we sandwiched in 10 days in Guatemala before heading back to Boulder over the holidays. Guatemala was the “bonus addition” to the first half of our year of travel, but it turned out to be one of our favorite countries. One of our goals for Guatemala was to jumpstart learning Spanish (after too many years of French), since we can use it at home in Colorado and during our future travels in South America. To help reach our goal, we enrolled in a weeklong Spanish course in the town of San Pedro along Lake Atitlan.
We had an adventurous start to our time in Guatemala. Our driver met us at “Arrivals” and took us out to his tiny, beat-up car for the trip to San Pedro. It was so small that, despite traveling light, we had to strap our bags on the roof rack and cram ourselves into the car. It was so beat-up that we only made it about a mile before the car died and left us stranded in a roundabout. Armed guards joined us in the dark on the curb as we waited for a solution. After about 1 hour, our tour operator convinced a taxi driver to take us the “four hours” to San Pedro. He had a bigger and more durable looking taxi, but it was not a 4-wheel drive, which we would later learn is recommended. The three of us in the back seat appreciated our newfound space until the driver asked if his wife and daughter could join us so he would have company during the drive home. We were so bewildered that at first we didn’t even understand his question since every seat was taken. We suggested that it might not work out and averted having another two people join us (we still don’t know where they would have sat!).
In the end, our 4-hour journey took 7½ hours and we arrived at our destination at 1:30 am after bottoming out over every speed bump (the speeds bumps weren’t high, the taxi was that low) and even crashing off the road at a hairpin turn. Our kind host family welcomed us (yes – we were doing a home stay) and showed us to our room. We thought we were staying at a room in their home, but their home was a converted hostel. Our neighbors, who arrived back from the bars just as we were settling in a little after 2AM, were four twenty-year-old-guys whose rooms looked like they had been there a long time. We crawled into our questionably clean beds and awoke a few hours later, cold and fully clothed, to one of the most striking landscapes we have ever seen.Lake Atitlan is stunningly beautiful and the town of San Pedro lures you into blissful peace. We moved to a hotel with rooms right on the lake and decided we could stay there for months. The lake’s ducks and other birds played a symphony all day as we lounged in hammocks (not overnight – see our blog post for Manaus!) and studied Spanish in our room. San Pedro is the perfect travelers’ mecca. It has some of the best food in the world and is populated by some of the kindest people you’ll meet anywhere.
Three volcanoes tower above the lake and numerous other peaks surround the lake. One afternoon, we naively decided to climb a neighboring peak called Indian Nose (or Nostro Maya). The whole way up, Ryan kept asking us why we hated him so much and made him do the hike. (What is hiking in Peru and Bhutan going to be like with our kids!?). Turns out we climbed 2,000 feet in less than two hours so maybe Ryan was partially right to be concerned!
We took classes at the San Pedro Spanish Institute where, for $100/week each, we had individual tutors for four hours each day. Jay was the prize student and learned more Spanish than the rest of us. Ryan had the most fun since he was too active to sit down and got to learn by roaming the town and playing soccer with his tutor. Christy learned the most about Guatemala by talking to her tutor for hours about the civil war and the plight of the people today. Luke managed to partake in a little of all of the above.
We pried ourselves away from San Pedro to see a few more towns before we returned to the US. We took a boat across the lake to Panajachel, a shopping mecca, before heading to Antigua, Guatemala’s former capital. We enjoyed the old city by strolling the cobble stone streets, eating wonderful food and learning how to make chocolate!