Just a short bus ride away from Antigua - about 7 hours by a direct shuttle - is Lake Atitlan, a large endorheic lake (one that does not flow to the sea) in the Guatemalan Highlands. We arrived in a village called Panajachel from where we took a small boat along the lake to a smaller village called San Pedro de Laguna. We found a nice little ´new´ hostel called Yo Mama’s - run by an American girl. The hostel is just a couple of months open and has still some child sicknesses but the atmosphere is amazing. Laid back and really quiet.

My and the girls - Laura and Nicole from the states - went for a small walk and ended up in a kayak, discovering the lake shores, searching for a small beach. But we didn’t found the beach so we headed back again and did something all travelers love - doing nothing! Yes we just hang around in the hammocks and chilled for some hours.

The next day we took a small boat again to get to the other side of the lake to a place called San Marcos de Laguna, which only has 3000 people living there. The most places over here are closed because of the low season, but the rocks from where you can swim and dive were still open. It’s just a small walk from the village and has several small rocks where you can relax and dive into the lake. Here we hang around again, chilled for a bit, and finally jumped from the 5 meter high rock. There was even one higher - about 10 meters - but we skipped that one. After the action it was time to go back to San Pedro for diner and some well deserved beers.

Chichicastenango

Another highlight of Guatemala is the famous Chichicastenango market, so we took an early morning bus from San Pedro all the way to Chichicastenango. We got dropped of at the market and started to walk around, and in some way it made me feel like being in Bolivia again, in La Paz on the hugh street market. Everything from clothes to food was available here.

But the Maya market can’t win from the Inka market - it’s smaller and the prices are higher. But never the less the market was nice and I bought enough souvenirs to make my backpack even heavier.

The same day the shuttle took us back to Antigua where we checked in at hostel Jungle Party for a night.

Photos Lake Atitlan and Chichicastenango