Lines on the Road

Leg 3: Antigua to Lago de Atitlan

A week into the trip, we took a bus from Antigua, Guatemala, to Lago de Atitlan, a beautiful lake ringed by mountains and volcanoes. We got a slammin' deal on our hotel room, which was just off the lake with a great view, for about $10 a night. There are multiple small towns you can travel to around the lake but we stayed in San Pedro, which was probably the most touristy of the bunch. This was one of my favorite legs of the trip - nothing to do but stare at the lake, read books and watch soccer games!

More pictures after the jump:

The first sign of Holy Week (besides the purple banners everywhere) was a children's parade that took place on the streets of Antigua. Kids dressed up in the traditional purple robes and swung incense in front of their parade floats. And can I just say that if I never smell incense again, I will be a happy, happy woman.

Kids carried these floats down the streets - the base was wooden and the
display was made of paper mache or some other light material.

Volcan Pacaya continued

Near the top of the volcano, you could lay sticks across this entrance and the vapors were so hot they caused the sticks to catch fire! After a demonstration, everyone backed slowly away from the ledge. Some groups brought marshmallows and roasted them but our guide wasn't that prepared.

We could enter a cave at one point, which was like being in a dry sauna - the walls were hot to the touch and some rocks on the ground were too hot to touch. I could only stay in there for a few minutes before the heat drove me out.

You can see the cave entry. And of course some stray dogs.

Volcan Pacaya

One Antigua morning we woke up early to join a group to hike Volcan Pacaya, an active volcano about an hour and a half away. Pacaya's last eruption was exactly one year ago today, covering the surrounding areas in ash. We experienced no such excitement when we were there, though we could see smoke coming from the crater. We'd heard from others that you could hike all the way to the crater and peer into the lava (if you dare) or at least take some pictures standing next to active lava flows, but the upper hike to the crater wasn't allowed by the time we got there and the lava flows had stopped since the last eruption. The hike was still fun though and our guide was entertaining - he had a pet name for our group (the Pumas) and spoke limited English save for phrases like "OK Pumas! Let's go Pumas! We're running DOWN, lean back Pumas! Lean back!!" Then he'd take off down the gravelly path, dividing our group into the downhill runners or the I-prefer-not-to-break-my-leg people.

This one followed us up.

Stray dogs were everywhere. They'd figured out that hikers eat their lunch at the top of the volcano so they'd attach themselves to the first troop heading up and then stay at the top until the end of the day, waiting for scraps.

We got to hike over sharp lava fields, which made me worry how my hiking shoes would hold up - these are some rocks you definitely wouldn't want to fall on.