Lago de Atitlan

I woke up at the same time as the resident rooftop cockerel in order to start my first weekend trip, to Lago de Atitlan, a vast, beautiful lake in the highlands created by the collapse of a volcanic cone (a caldera - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldera).

I decided in an adventurous spirit to undertake the short journey by chicken bus, brightly painted old schoolbuses used as public transport. Little did I know that arriving at the bus terminal in
Xela, that it would actually consist of buses queued up
along various congested roads surrounding a monstrous maze of a
market with throngs of people hurrying in the early morning mist to buy their weeks´shopping or to cram onto one of the many impatiently waiting buses. Horns blaring through the crowds signalled buses about to leave, and after three misdirections and sitting on an unmoving bus for twenty minutes, I finally made it onto the right one. Why I thought the station would consist of orderly rows of clearly labelled vehicles and politely queuing passengers I have no idea! I also soon learned that if a bus was labelled ´Panajachel´ it was probably going to Antigua and one labelled ´direct´ wasn´t likely to be going anywhere at all...

The journey itself was an incredible experience. Not only did I get to see the vast highland mountains I had arrived blindly via roll past under clear blue skies, all of my other senses were alerted too. It turned out to be more of a rollercoaster than a bus ride, people jostling for front row seats as we hurtled at breakneck speed around sharp bends cut into the hills, the rickety bus leaning into the corners with its load of baskets, sacks and animals precipitously balanced on the roof above us. The young boys working as conductors hung precariously out of the open door, yelling our destination to pedestrians as the bus slowed almost to a stop with just enough time for new passengers to get one foot on board before we were off again (regardless of whether they were tottering old men with canes, or mothers with babies bundled tight against their chests). Often we´d set off before the boys had returned from stowing cargo on the roof, and their legs would swing acrobatically into the door with only their ruffled hair to show. At first I felt sorry for them, working hard in such a dangerous job and at a young age, but I came to realise they were proud, running a tight ship, their strong muscular backs ruling the bus highway.

I was made most aware of my senses by the unabashed, direct stares of young children, looking questioningly and expectantly at me from between the seats in front. Their charcoal black eyes seemed to invade my thoughts, conveying both intrusion and intrigue as to the world I came from. I got the feeling that they were innocently airing the thoughts of the adults, who smiled graciously and answered my stumbled inquiries as to where we were, otherwise ignoring me.

Eventually the lake came into view between the crowded heads, not receiving a second glance from others going about their days but an internal gasp from me. Its vastness is indescribable and mesmerising, drawing your eyes as far as they can see.

To travel between the various lakeside villages you do so by lancha, ferries that bounce across the impenetrably deep choppy waters, spraying you unsubtlely with its surface. All around the shores are dotted isolated hamlets, farmers tilling the soil by hand for their crops of avocados, coffee and bananas. I stayed in San Pedro de Laguna, described as a party town but actually having much more substance to it than that. Yes, it had bohemian candlelit bars lining the main streets and ugly concrete hotel blocks popping up between the single-roomed ramshackle houses of the inhabitants, but somehow the revelling tourists buying tat from stalls and sounds and smells of families cooking around open fires in their simple abodes nestle comfortably side by side. It is almost as if the foreigners are ignored in order to bring some revenue into the town. But I could not ignore the locals, dressed in their textured dresses and chatting animatedly in shop doors, and made a point of straying from the main strip to see more of the real town - though I ended up hopelessly lost in the myriad of homes piled on top of each other, tiny smallholdings and scruffy dogs separating who owned what.

The morning view from my bedroom window was one you would pay hundreds of pounds for in another land, a ´luxury´ panorama, the sombre sun sparkling on sheer glassy water - the one thing that reminded me where I was was the woman on the rooftop directly below scrubbing clothes in an old tin pot and stoking the fire under a huge vat of beans. I sat reading all morning, such a luxury to think about nothing but enjoying the peaceful views in front of me and creating the images from the book in my mind. Although I had a glimpse of what it must be like to admit your profession to anyone - the Romanian girl in the next room came out to ask me my opinion on why he had a swollen neck gland and what drugs she should buy from the pharmacy. I´m realising that medicine is not something you ever take a holiday from in any country.

A failed attempt to find Maximon, a cigar-smoking rum-drinking deity in the town of Santiago. He moves homes every so often, meaning you have to ask where he is currently residing (Ok, I foolishly followed a young boy who said if I paid him he would take me there, being led along deserted streets in the schorching afternoon heat before coming to my senses and asking two wise looking old gentleman who said Maximon was 4km away and the boy was taking me to a fake - I got rather angry with the precocious boy actually, it felt like the little set-up he and his friends had going on was sniggering in the face of all the honest, good-hearted souls I have met previously). I returned to Panajachel, (the main town on the lake) to find a way back to Xela. But something about this place has captured me, with its mix of picture-perfect scenery tempered by the human detritus created by locals living off the land and holiday-makers filling the silent mountains with clunking of glasses; it seems like our way of saying ´cheers´to the world for providing such a beautiful place to relax.

This feverish happiness and the cooling breeze off the refreshing water should be drunk in with some temperance however: it is here that hundreds of people were buried alive in their sleep by the monstrous mudslides created by Hurricane Stan in 2005. http://www.atitlan.net/video/hurricane-stan.htm

I finally left early on Monday morning, catching my final glimpes of Atitlan as we ascended up the mountainside. I may have cheated by ordering a private shuttle (nothing to do with being lazy, just making sure I got back to work on time...)