From chicken buses to chicken boats

Hammocks in Panajachel
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We had a long travel day from San Cristobal in Mexico to Panajachel in Guatemala. Our day didn't start too well when the taxi driver who was supposed to take us to the bus station in San Cristobal took us instead to a bus parking lot - no idea why he did this! Anyway, fortunately his buddy had overheard where he was taking us & followed us in his taxi to tell our driver where he should be taking us instead. We arrived with minutes to spare, but all was well & our bus was soon under way.

Lake Atitlan
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We started off with a three hour bus journey to reach the Guatemalan border. Then we had to take a taxi across nomansland, be cleared by immigration & catch a tuktuk up the road to find our first chicken bus of the afternoon. All in all we had to catch five chicken buses to reach our final destination of the day. For those of you who aren't aware, chicken buses are so called because the locals carry all sorts onboard them - including live chickens! I was sad that we didn't get to witness this, although we did get to experience the full effect of the tightly packed buses. They have seats made for two upon which you can seat at least three people. There are also people standing in the aisles clinging on for dear life (I was one of these at some point in the afternoon), whilst even more people squeeze through the non-existent gaps trying to sell their goods - mostly homemade food & pastries.

Lake Atitlan
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Miraculously we (& all of our luggage) arrived in Panajachel, on the shore of Lake Atitlan, in one piece some six hours later. All in all we had covered around 500km today, & it felt like it :o)  In the evening we went out to a local restaurant for dinner where we opted for the dish of the day - a whole plate of food (meat, rice, garlic bread, veggies & salad) costing around $2!

The next day we went to explore Lake Atitlan & some of the lakeside villages. We started off in Santiago Atitlan a fairly touristy village way over on the other side. Upon arrival we were accosted by hordes of young kids offering to take us to see Maximo - a locally revered God who drinks beer & smoke fags! Stranger still is the fact that Maximo is a plank of wood (sorry, beautifully carved statue) that wears lots & lots of silk ties. In order to pray to the God all you have to do is feed him beer & put lit cigarettes into his mouth. There were genuine worshippers there at the same time as us. A very bizarre experience indeedy. Our tour guide told us that one time when she went up to see Maximo she was told that he had a hangover & wasn't up to visitors. Hmmmmm.

Sunset behind Lake Atitlan
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After we'd done some shopping in this village we headed on round the lake by a boat we chartered for about $2 each, to another village called San Pedro. After a quick potter round the town we plonked ourselves down in a nice restaurant overlooking the lake where we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer & chilling in the sun. Oooooo, it's a hard life :o)  Our 'direct' boat back went via about 12 more villages (so I was getting a little tetchy towards the end of it), but the beautiful sunset more than made up for it.