"Gringotenango..."

Here it all started...
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Thinking of spending a relaxed weekend at the beautiful Lake Atitlan, for instance in the town of Panajachel? Well, don´t. In a glimpse I thought I was in Khao San Road, Bangkok. Oh my God...! Loads of copied brand clothes for sale, LOADS of backpackers, late night restaurants (unusual in a country where everything seems to close at nine other places), a lot of crap souvenirs stores and even Tuk-tuk´s, the small three-wheeled scooters working as bumpy-ridy taxis! My first thought was actually "let´s get out of here!". Yes, sorry people, but I can't stand these tourist traps.

Riviera de Atitlan. They actually call it that.
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Thing was that we were waiting for a friend of mine from Norway arriving the the day before and who was supposed to be in the area and meet us at a certain restaurant. But our camioneta broke down several times on our way so we were many hours delayed. One of the bus assistants had to walk for some kilometers to fetch some water in a bucket to fill the bus radiator. And when it wasn´t sufficient, we put on what we had of soda and cola. Cool. The next morning we finally spot my tired friend on the street, and he told us that he had spent the night in some dirty shack on the other side of the lake with some over-the-hill-burn-out hippies he got familiar with while waiting for us for more than 5 (!) hours. They bought him some beers. Strange how quickly one always make friends with someone who does that(!).

Chris, who among the nine languages he was familiar with, also spoke good norwegian.

Here's the bus to the sorrounding villages!
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We left Gringo-tenango (hops, I meant, Hippie-tenango, or Pana!) by boat to San Marco. There are a lot of villages sorrounding the Lake with good trekking possibilities. Besides: I´ve heard that my biological mother were from the area. Weird. And so were many of the houses alongside the lake: experimental architecture, two DISGUSTING green 15-stores hotels and crazy painted cabins dominated the lake-side for some kilometers.

Our boat put us of at the shore of San God-knows-where. But on the small cafeteria on the shoreside we met a nice guy, Chris, who among the nine languages he was familiar with, also spoke good norwegian. Some locals told us a bit earlier that the view and scenary along the paths between the lake villages is really beautiful and stunishing, but there were unfortunately armed thieves along these paths  who thought so too. When we told this to Chris he said "Listen, there are a lot of dangers outhere, all the time. If you come up, smile and say 'hello' to people, they will smile and say hello back. But if you have a skeptic and reserved behaviour to them, they will be skeptic to you too." Well spoken. But still we chose another direction for our walking trip.

Like in Bangkok...
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We could almost smell the coffee from the hills, but if you order a cup of coffee in a cafeteria here then they usually serve you the instant version. All the best coffe is exported. Along the way we also saw tiny houses, almost like doll houses placed in the ditch. They were houses for the spirits of the dead relatives, and are offered rum and cigarettes. Nice, as we usually 'offer' flowers. We encountered several locals, smiling and many of them didn't speak a word of spanish. Here, only the local tounge was valid, a fact which increased the feeling of beeing on a remote place in a remote land. And when we sat down on a cafeteria my friend had a norwegian newspaper which I read while drinking (the cheap, instant) coffee. The waiter boy curiosly looked over my shoulders and before his eyes poped out he expressed "wow, I didn't know you had your own newspaper in Santa Cruz!".  I guess he was right. But they sure have stunishing views, with and without tourists.