The Bellybutton

I don't think I have ever felt my life put in as much jeopardy as it was on the drive to Panajachal.  The first hour was breathtakingly beautiful.  The second hour was breathtakingly terrifying.  The Guatemalan countryside is lovely, very isolated, and totally green.  I haven't smelled forest this fresh since I was in the Kootenay.  We passed through many little villages which seemed to get more rural as we drove on.  Our little van, completely packed with eight people to six seat belts barreled around hairpin turns down to the valley of Lake Aitilan.  I was overwhelmed with trying to absorb as much of the scenery as possibly while simultaneously not peeling my eyes from the road...as if watching the road would prevent an accident from happening. Immediately upon arriving in Pana, we boarded a boat to Santa Cruz.  Despite the fact that boat travel is the only way to get from town to town on Aitilan, there is no public boat system.  That does not mean there are a lack of boats, many people make their living off of selling boat rides to tourists and locals alike, just that you can never depend on a boat to get you somewhere by some certain time.

We stayed our first night at Villa Sumaya, a small yogi-oriented retreat located on the lake.  Though I have yet to venture into the actual town of Santa Cruz, I can already tell how different the towns of Aitilan are from those of the lowlands.  There are twelve different tribes around the lake, and to them Spanish is a second language.  This place feels extremely isolated.  Nightfall brought a spectacular lightening show reflecting off of distant clouds with fireflies on the side.

We stayed last night and tonight at Casa del Mundo, a hotel the next town over run by an Alaskan-Guatemalan couple.  Dinner is served family style, and I enjoyed chatting with Barrett, Elio, and Anthony from Florida who did a pretty good job convincing me to go to college...which has been a topic of contention lately.  This morning mom and dad boated to the Mayan town of San Pedro, and I opted to hang back, read, play some gui-tar, and hike to Santa Cruz in the afternoon with Hunt, a sixty-something dude from San Diego, here for the board meeting of a community service group run out of Panajachal.  Tomorrow we leave for the town of Chichicastinanga for the biggest market in all of Guatemala.