We managed to get a late checkout to enjoy the lake views for as long as possible. We wondered into town quite early for breakfast at Circles Cafe & Bakery before returning for a swim and to pack up. The boat ride to Panajachel was incredibly bumpy, not sure where the chop came from as it wasn’t windy. Another example of the incredible natural forces that are present on Lake Atitlán. It was a 600m walk to our hotel – Regis Hotel Spa. We decided to stay in the heart of the town rather than the alternative hotel a 15 min walk outside of town lakeside. On reflection, we should have stayed on the lake given how wonderful it was.
The hotel looked lovely and our room was nice enough, but unfortunately no wifi in the rooms. However this was offset by the hot springs and a temescal. We unpacked and headed out to explore the town, immediately bumping into a couple of drunk locals called Tony and Cristian. I joined them in a tuk tuk for a tour of Para while Deryn browsed the local stores. We ended up going to Christian’s home and meeting more of his family before returning to find Dits eating lunch in a local cafe. The lads joined us for a few bevvies after which Deryn and I ‘escaped to phone Courtney’ as the lads were getting a bit rowdy. We said we would call them later which we never did. We grabbed some booze on the way home and spent the rest of the evening playing cards.
The next morning we decided to hire some bikes and ride up to have a look at a couple of the miradors and the cemetery in Solola. I had a suspicion it would be a in big climb but I couldn’t get any sense out of the lady we were renting the bikes off, so off we went. We knew we were in trouble when 500m into the ride the road just went up and up and up. We tried cycling for a while but eventually had to get off and walk. Thankfully a truck stopped and asked if we would like a lift. So we chucked our bikes in the back (onto a pile of gravel) and joined 2 other cyclist in the back. The climb was horrendous – we would never have done it! The truck had to stop half way up to refill with water before continuing the journey. It took a good 20 minutes to get to Solola – we both agreed it was an incredibly scenic drive perched high on the back of the truck. We jumped off on the edge of the town and fought traffic into the town square.
We locked our bikes at a local museum and headed in to explore it. Pretty dull except for having to climb 3 flights of very steep stairs to the top floor where the working tower clock was on display although it gave no idea how it worked. The views from the windows were great. We then wondered around the town market and Deryn very nearly bough an indigenous shirt before I talked her out of it. I grabbed a fried chicken feed from Guatemala’s version of KFC – Pollo Compero. It was as awful as KFC, to the benefit of a local dog in the town square. On that point, we have certainly noticed that the dogs are become more mangy the further north we go. Colombia was an aberration with their love of Chihuahuas, everywhere else the dogs are much larger.
The local cemetery was next on the list – while the colours and crypts were cool, it was a but run down and actually looked a lot better from afar than up close. Still we were really glad we had made the trip because the indigenous Mayan culture was alive and flourishing in the town. The clothes worn by both the males and females were incredibly colourful, with unusually the men out blinging the women for a change.
The ride down was a blast, easily reaching speeds of 60kmh. We could have gone a lot faster but didn’t want to risk it with some of the overtaking we had seen on the way up. I measured the ride on Strava – 8km with over 600m of vertical decline. We thought about having lunch at a luxury hotel with access to the lake but decided it just wasn’t that nice a day. So we returned back to out hotel for a kip, followed by a soak in the hot springs and some exercise. We headed into the town for an expensive dinner that looked nothing like the photos on the billboard outside!
The following day was spent relaxing ahead of our weekend with Clayton and Emma in Antigua.