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.
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| 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.
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| Children staring into the street from their from yard. |
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| 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.
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| Home supporting it's party. |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Enjoying the lake from San Pedro. |
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The boats we took from Panajachel
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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.
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| The view of the volcano from Panajachel. |
