9 March 2006 - Lake Atitlan, described as "the most beautiful in the world" by Aldous Huxley

Lake Atitlan is indeed absolutely beautiful. Highlights here included:

1) Staying at La Iguana Perdida in Santa Cruz (a small village on the edge of the lake) for 4 days. The lake and surrounding hills and volcanoes are beautiful to look at. The first night I was slightly alarmed to find a scorpion in my bed! Fortunately they are afraid of light, and fast-moving shoes.

On Saturday night was the Iguana Perdida's fancy dress party, right on the shore of lake Atitlan, with about 10 of my friends from language school in Antigua and probably another 50 or so others, plus all the staff. The rules were obligatory cross-dressing fancy dress from the hostel's own extensive wardrobe or no service at the bar. Costumes were selected on a first come first served basis, but not wanting to seem too eager to bag myself the most beautiful dress (and perhaps hoping that they might all be taken by the time I got there - no such luck) I was left with a dubious choice after 70 or so others had already chosen. I eventually selected a kind of blue jump suit with spangly chest/collar design and plunging zipper - think car mechanic meets Abba and you won't be far off, and the bar staff (also in fancy dress) had a ready supply of balloons to provide cleavage. The party itself was a lot of fun, aided by happy hour(s) cocktails, lots of music (some live), dancing, bbq, and general silliness. There were also some very impressive fire jugglers (the kind with burning wicks on the end of a pair of chains). I did feel somewhat the worse for wear afterwards though, and of course there was another scorpion in my room when I went to bed.

2) Spent the next week in San Pedro, another of the towns on the edge of lake Atitlan, a short but choppy boat ride from Santa Cruz. Enrolled in another Spanish school and improved my Spanish some more. Unfortunately the place I wanted to stay at was fully booked, so I had to check into a hotel which later turned out to be housing a large group of travelling evangelists, fond of singing songs about Jesus at ALL times of the day. My ipod has never been more critical to my sanity.

I did meet some very cool people elsewhere in San Pedro though, which is basically a very cheap, very pleasant gringoville full of hippies who have made it their home and set up business of some kind. Possibly the most interesting person I met was a guy called Milan from Slovakia. After fortunately being warned off our intended walk due to the extreme likelihood of robbery by bandits, we did a walk up one of the mountains surrounding the lake called "La Nariz del indio" (which means the nose of the indian, because its profile looks like a face gazing up at the sky). It was a short but tiring walk that gave fantastic views of nearly the entire lake, and during the descent when it was more possible to speak I learned about Milan's ongoing research into fractals (the long term practical applications possibly being the prediction of weather patterns and forest fires to name a couple...) which was very interesting, although I still don't know what "self-organising criticality" means.

In the afternoon I took my Spanish teacher (a native speaker of one of the 22 Mayan languages, and big football fan like most central americans) to watch the friendly between England and Uruguay for the first half of my lessons, and learned a lot of essential football vocabulary over a beer or 2 - definitely the ideal way to practice!

3) Travelled from San Pedro by bus to Xela (pronounced Shayla) which is a major city in the western highlands of Guatemala, relatively untouristy but with a few places to visit nearby and on the way north to Mexico. The bus journeys in Guatemala are always interesting - they are basically a case of sharing a 2 person seat with at least 2 other people depending upon their size. In this case I was sharing with a mother and 4 children for about 2 hours! The drivers must also be amongst the most optimistic people on earth if one is to judge by their threatened, attempted, and completed overtaking manouevres. The sight of an approaching blind bend, with 3 or 4 back to back vehicles ahead, and the bus's acceleration reduced to near zero under the fullest possible load of passengers and luggage, does nothing to phase them. The same can not be said of the majority of the passengers (99% locals), who frequently crane their necks to see what onrushing juggernaut might be about to spell their end.

Day trips from Xela included one to Zunil, where I bathed in some springs heated by volcanic activity. Being the weekend it was busy with locals, and the cafe next to it insisted on playing some really inappropriate 90s euro-cheese-trance, which was amusing at least, but completely incongruent with the beautiful natural surroundings of cloud forest vegetation spilling out from the surrounding mountainside and attempts at relaxation. Also visited the small town of San Andres Xecul, where I saw an extraordinarily lurid church, a shrine to San Simon (or "Maximon") - a kind of deity whom you offer different candles for different desires, including black for a curse upon an enemy, and met some friendly locals.

Xela also had an interesting natural history museum which featured creatures including an 8-legged goat (the sign curiously explained that it had lived for just 5 minutes after being born, during which time a strange fluid had come out of its nose and mouth), a 2-headed calf, and a pair of "sea-devils" which looked just like the stereotypical little grey men depictions of aliens but with additional acquatic appendages like tails and flowing shoulder tendrils. Odd, fascinating, and probably made up.

4) Travelled from Xela by bus to Huehuetenango (or Huehue) which is close to the border with Mexico. Realised upon arriving I had forgotten my camera's memory card, one of the few irreplaceable items. Returned for it next morning, then back to Huehue, 7 hours later - very annoying. Stayed here only 1 more uneventful day before heading north to the border, but not until after the shower had given me a very unpleasant electric shock to the back of the head, fortunately after I had turned the shower off or perhaps it might have been worse. On the way to the bus I then passed a local who was sitting on the side of the road wearing a hoody and casually brandishing a handgun in the direction of something further down the hillside, at 9:30am! His casual manner was simultaneously alarming and reassuring.