¿De donde Santa Cruz?

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  Lake Atitlan, Guatemala
Thursday, January 10, 2008

On our way to Lake Atitlan, we met Paul, a volunteer from Austin, Texas. He is volunteering joggling teacher here at the lake. He suggested to us to stay in San Marcos and since we like hiking, to hike between San Marcos and Santa Cruz, another town on the lake. He said it should take roughly 2 hours and is well marked.

That being said, Jua and I decided to eat well the night before by going to a restaurant called Happy Taco. Some other travels at our hostel said they have good cheap food. We sit down at a candle lite table (since they have no lights) and order. We asked for the menu, however, they also had only 3 things to order. Chicken tacos, pizza, and nachos with guacamole. I ordered the tacos, Jua the vegetarian ordered pizza. My tacos came wrapped in flower tortillas instead of corn ones because they ran out. They weren't half bad until I bit into a chicken bone which made me lose my appetite

Indigenous girls playing basketball

. Jua's pizza turned out to be bigger than her and was served with green salsa and ketchup. We ended up giving the rest away to other people in the restaurant because there was no way to finish it.

We thought we were going to have a peaceful night sleep until we heard an Evangelical Christian pastor singing and speaking on his megaphone til the wee hours of the night. The dogs didn't enjoy it so much, as they too were howling at the pastor. Our mission to night is to witness this happening. Going to sleep wasn't that bad to listen to however, when it started up again at 8am we were not very happy campers.

We decided to the 2 hour hike that Paul had mentioned to Santa Cruz. We thought we could take our half full water bottles and fill them up there along with getting lunch. We were warned not to take ANY valuables with us since there has been reports of robbers. All we had was our water bottles and some money I had hidden in my pants pocket. We started the hike from the docks and walked along the shore line just as Paul described. We stumbled across a group of men building a house and this is where our problems started. They explained in Spanish that there was no road and to turn around. We tried to continue straight but realized it really was a dead end

Jua and me at Lake Atitlan

. We decided to hike up... we finally reached the top of the property and came to a barbwire fence. We could either turn around and face the workers or hop the fence. We decided to hop the fence, however, there was also a gully on the other side. It became quite difficult but we managed to successfully cross over it.

We ended up walking with a boy who was bring his mom flowers until the road split and we decided to go down and he stayed up high. This was out first mistake. ALWAYS trust the locals to make better decisions then us tourists. We hiked down until we rain into a fisherman and his son who asked us in English (after we couldn't respond in Spanish) where were going. He then told us in Spanish that we had to hike back up and go through the town... and so we did. It was cute run down town. All the people were dressed in traditional indigenous clothing. Pigs laid lazy on the streets as people walked by doing their daily chores.

We continued through the town and walk up this steep steep hill where we saw locals carrying these huge batches of corn on their backs. They had huge bushels tied up and wrapped around their head. We saw about 5 people walking like that.

Then at the top of this part we got to a hotel

Lake Atitlan

. At this point we were walking for around an hour and a half. The road really didn't continue anywhere but down. So we went down. We walked through a grave yard with colored graves, down the side of someones house, to a huge house that had someone mowing the lawn. We didn't want to walk on the lawn so we waited and waved to get someones attention to ask where to go. After a few minutes someone came out of the house and told us in Spanish to go back up the hill where we came from and continue. So we walked back. This detour took us close to 40 minutes. We decided before continuing to back track to the hotel, fill up on water since we were empty and try to ask for directions with our broken Spanish. The women was super nice and pointed us the way through the corn field. So we were off....again. We contained on the path that seemed to stop. We came across some rocks. We went down the rocks towards the water when a local saw us and said that the path was back up the mountain. We searched for 30 minutes for this path but could not find it. We went back down to that local and asked for his help. After a 5 minute story on where to go and where he lived that we didn't understand a word of he showed us the back to the path. The path continued down a steep rock which of course we slide down and then through more corn fields and narrow paths.

That was the last time we got lost but it took us a total of 4.5 hours to get there, but we got there

Recyclable wall

. We planned to hike back but by the time we arrived there and ate, we decided against it.

Now, you may ask what is in Santa Cruz... well there's a dive shop there. And, yes I could have spent 1Q around $0.15 to call, but we wanted an adventure. After we ate I signed up to go diving tomorrow. I decided against doing the hike again tomorrow, I'll take the boat instead. Our boat road back was interesting too. The lake is rough in the afternoon and made everyone on the little boat sick.

Now that we're back in San Marcos, we searched the streets for Paul who told us to do this hike. The night isn't over yet... we will find him... :)

We decided to stay here until Sat. and then move over to San Pedro for a night.

Hope everyone is doing well...

Allie and Jua

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They took old bottles to build the wall

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