el lago atitlan

on friday we took the chicken bus, the cheapest route to a touristy lake town called panahachel. the trip was about 3 hours by chicken, which is really just an old yellow school bus painted bright colors and where the seating is usually three adult passengers per old rickety seat. we ate at a restaurant owned by a good old gringo from texas. strangely the sandwhich (it was probalby the mayo) made my stomache queeze a little, the first of my stay in guatemala. later we went out to a night club aka, la discoteca. which has an exciting end because they close at one am. with three flahsing police cars, and police officers armed wtih huge guns. of course us silly tourists, thinking this is a little absurbed, asked to take pictures with the cops. and i now have a photo with la policia de panahachel, and a huge semi-automatic. later they told us we could sneak back into the club, but we had to keep the lights off and there was actually a look out man, and the police came and nocked on the door. kind of stupid, and it was boring so we left (it was completely safe...).

the next day we rose at 8am to find the amazing sunshine! a first and greatly appreciated. we took a boat across the lake to a town called san marcos, where we stayed at a fancy hotel (20 dollars us) that was right on the lake. we went swimming and ate lunch and sat in the sauna. the following day we tried to catch the sunrise but kind of missed it and mostly saw dawn on the lake which is gorgeous, then we ate our ¨continental breakfast¨¨ which turned out to be just toast and coffee. lame. them for some kayaking to see the fancy mansions on the lake, mostly owned by foreigners, and fancy hotels populated by foreigners. i met an italian and an american family who now live there.some more swimming. then on the walk back some boys seemingly tried to rob my friend. she was behind us and then all of a sudden i saw her running and they were behind her...luckily (i like to take credit) i have a quick scream reflect and yelled something liek a ÄAAYYYYYYYYYYYY¨and i think i scared them, cuase the bolted in the other direction. no harm done. i only had some dirty clothes to steal and a bottle of water, so i wasn´t so concerned. later we took the boat back and caught the bus home just in time, through the windy crazy mountains...