last weekend at Lago Atitlan

Lago Atitlan is, by far, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Unreal. It reminds me a lot of Tahoe, only with steeper mountains and totally different character.

We got a private shuttle leaving from Xela at 7 a.m. and had a motion-sickness-inducing ride through the mountains down to Atitlan. We arrived in San Pedro around 10 a.m. to our obscenely beautiful, relatively new hotel right by the Santiago dock. We divided up our party of 6 between 2 rooms and headed out to check out what San Pedro has to offer.

The answer to that quandry is: lots of expatriates who own businesses in the town. Pretty much every sign we saw was in English. Now, that's not, by itself, a bad thing. It IS, however, an impediment to the purpose of my trip; i.e., learning more Spanish.

It was just before noon when we saw a sign advertising BBQ and bocce at a place called ¨La Piscina.¨ Uh, really?? I could be eating a BURGER and playing BOCCE? Oh, so there.

Thus began and ended my first day in San Pedro. Well, it wasn't entirely over after that, but the afternoon sure was shot. La Piscina serves a very deadly concoction that they swear is just sangria but is actually the tastiest and most dangerous thing I have ever consumed. I lost terribly at bocce. I had a lot of sangria and a tasty burger as well. My friends and I went back to our hotel to nap before dinner. An excellent day overall.

Next morning I was supposed to hike volcano San Pedro with some friends, but I couldn't make the 4:30 a.m. wakeup call, so I continued sleeping instead. Woke up a couple hours later and had brunch with other non-hikers. We continued wandering around town, and it got a bit too hot out for that activity to remain comfortable. We went back to the hotel to drink white wine and await the arrival of our hiker friends.

Their hike only took 4 or 5 hours. I wish I had gone, but I was also informed that it was far more brutal than my demanding morning of brunch, wine, and a token amount of studying. We all chatted on the patio of the hotel. Half of our crew left to get a chicken bus back to Xela. Then one of the hikers went down to our room to shower, and found out her bag (containing all her money, debit card, and passport) had just been stolen from our hotel room.

Oh fuck.

What do you do when this happens?

1. Freak out if you were the one robbed; get mega-calm if you are her friend who will have to help her navigate the next steps.
2. Go to internet cafe. Cancel all cards. Research how to get your passport for your flight that leaves in less than 48 hours.
3. Figure out how to get to your country's embassy ASAP in the morning. This involves an early trip as well as your friends spotting you money for your private shuttle that gets you to the embassy during its ridiculous hours.
4. Go to the police - the special tourism police, in our case. They will write up a report that you can take to the embassy to aid in getting your passport. They initially seem very helpful. Then they will call the owner of the hotel where you are staying, and he will demand an inspection (and will also pay off the cops to come do this).
5. Deal with the police when they show up at your hotel unnanounced. Go back to police station another time to amend police report. Politely decline when police say 'you know, we could help you,' as in, if you are willing to pay.
   
6. Drink heavily upon return.
7. Sleep as much as possible to deal with shit the next day.

My friends and I took a boat from San Pedro to Panajachel, another beautiful town that is a bit bittersweet for me now. The friend who was robbed got on a shuttle to the capitol immediately and managed to arrive at the embassy an hour before it closed. They were nice enough to stay open 1 hour later until her emergency passport was ready. My other friend and I attempted to get on a shuttle back to Xela, and found out there was a huge protest over energy prices blocking the highway in that direction.

Uh.

So we had to stay in Panajachel until 4 p.m. We sat in a cafe all day, eating, drinking, studying, and appreciating the fact we two were the ones stuck and not our friend who needed to make it to the embassy.

4 p.m. - we go to catch our shuttle. All is well for about half an hour, when we discover that there has been a ROCK SLIDE on the highway. We spend the next 2 hours in a restaurant along the highway (and yes, it is singular 'highway' because there really is only one that can take us where we need to go). Depart from here around 6:30. Change shuttles 3 times over the next 2-ish hours. Arrive back in Xela around 9 p.m. We checked out of our hotel at 8 a.m.

Oh god, what a weekend.

*****

One piece of news that alleviates my homesickness: it has apparently been a very cold, wet May in San Francisco. I spent last weekend at a tropical Central American lake. Yeah.