Panajachel, Lake Atitlan

Trip Start Dec 02, 2008
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Trip End Feb 07, 2009


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Where I stayed
Jardins del Lago
(Panajachel hotels)

Flag of Guatemala  , Western Highlands,
Saturday, January 17, 2009

We took a 2.5 hour bus ride from Antigua to Panajachel, on Lake Atitlan. It had been 33 years since I had been here. The only things I recognized were the Lake Atitlan, and the three Volcanoes. We will use this town as a base to explore the surrounding villages and lakeside towns.

We stayed at the Jardins del Lago hotel. It is a bit upscale for us, at $60.00 US a night, but it has good cable television coverage for the Inaguration on the 20th. We plan to spend the whole day indoors watching the events unfold in Washington DC. People down here are excited for us and for the world. He really has created a lot of hope for people regarding their and our futures. We are looking fiorward to the day of television.

Lake Atitlan is located in the Central Highlands. It is surrounded by massive volcanoes, and is clear and very deep First view of lake from road north
First view of lake from road north
 . The village here has grown and developed with the tourist induatry. There are shuttles to every destination from here. Each evening we walk along the malecon or promenade and listen to the music, watch the Maya families make tapistries and attempt to sell them to us. We bought a few, but we have a limit on what we can carry on our backs. We will next make the trip up higher into the mountain to visit the Mayan town of Chichicastenango for the Sunday Market.

This is a pleasant place to hang out. The weather has been cooperating. It has presented a broken pattern of partly cloudy skies, temps in the 70īs. It gets cold at night when the wind comes up. The people here are friendly and outgoing. They are very helpful, and very hard working. Here are a few pictures of Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. Tomas
 
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Comments

barbarajgardner
barbarajgardner on Jan 21, 2009 at 12:19AM

panajachel
Hi Tom and Barbara - it looks absolutely beautiful there. I am hoping that Don and I can return there. Maybe next year? I'd be interested in going to a Spanish school there.
I'm glad the weather is good - and that you're not in Seattle1

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