Our Weekend in Panajachel

We just arrived back to Guatemala City after an amazing vacation in Panajachel. Panajachel is in the Guatemalan highlands and provides views of 3 volcanoes and sits on Lake Atitlan. The trip from the city to Pana (an abbreviation we picked up from locals in Panajachel) is important to mention when describing our trip. Up in till this point our group has only been exposed to a few select places in the city and nowhere outside of it. This bus ride provided us with insight into different parts of the city, villages and towns outside of the city, and everything in between. It is hard to describe everything we saw on our trip but I’ll start by mentioning a few things are adding more pictures than I have been—we all took a lot!

      1)   To start, driving in Guatemala is, in one word, dangerous. There are no speed limits, lanes are   often disregarded, it is seldom that cars yield to pedestrians, and the exhaust that is emitted to the   countless “chicken” buses driving around would definitely be illegal in the states. Driving is   always…exciting and during rush hour, even more so. 

A view from the car.

      2)   The city is divided into 22 different zones. Our hotel is in Zone 10, the safest zone. Besides     Roosevelt, Zone 11, we stay in the area near our hotel. This trip took us into other zones where many   patients coming to Roosevelt to live. We were exposed to  more communities of cinderblock houses,  dilapidated store fronts with children playing out front, sections of highway covered with workers  from the villages returning home to places we wouldn’t consider homes at all. Once we were in Panajachel it was interesting to see many children wearing shirts that had clearly been donated from the states.

Children staring into the street from their from yard.

Looking down on a village in Sololá

     3)   There were political messages everywhere we looked including billboards, the side of the  mountain, painted onto shops and homes, on guard rails, etc. As we left the city we observed a large  number of signs for LIDER, the Libertad Democrática Renovada. We were later told that this party spends an exorbitant amount advertising particularly outside of the city. Many villagers are unaware of exactly what the political parties stand for, many do not speak Spanish, and many are therefore without the  means to vote in an educated fashion. There are campaigns that pay families and towns to paint their logo on houses and mountains etc in order to secure the vote of the villagers. Unfortunately the most prominently advertised campaign, LIDER, is not the most attentive to the villagers needs.

Home supporting it's party.

One of the only proper billboards with a political sign.

We got to our hotel in the middle of a downpour and decided to spend the rest of the night at the hotel restaurant chatting and playing card games, excited for the sun to come out so we could begin exploring the town.

Saturday was amazing, we started with a traditional Guatemalan breakfast complete with beans, plantains, eggs, tortillas, queso de oja, and, of course, coffee. We then wandered around the market place, spoke with vendors about their products and often whether they are familiar with Roosevelt—everyone is. 

A view of a shop in the market.

We then took a boat across Lake Atitlan to San Pedro, a volcano and island. We enjoyed walking around this “hipster” island complete with plenty of rocks to jump off of into the water, hidden restaurants and cafes and views that are hard to forget. As we were enjoying San Pedro, anti-government protests were beginning around the country read more here. We are interested to see what results from these protests in the coming days, weeks and so forth.

Enjoying the lake from San Pedro.

The boats we took from Panajachel

Once we got back we headed to dinner and a bar, Pana Rock to listen to some live music. The band that was playing definitely had talent but we weren’t sure what to think of the falsetto singing and strange electronic noises. We spent Sunday morning relaxing on the docks, kayaking, swimming and taking a last minute look at the markets before heading back to the city, sad to see such an amazing and relaxing weekend end, but excited to start a new week of work at Roosevelt. 

The view of the volcano from Panajachel.