Guatemala

Panajachel, Lago de Atitlan
We cruised over the border at La Mesilla with ease and again weren’t stopped at any military check points. If you didn’t know better you’d fly through these borders without any paperwork. The only blip was when Karen ignored the poor fumigation guy thinking he was trying to con us into something. Always on guard in these places, but mainly they’re there to help. We had planned to stop in Huehuetenango, but after a brief lunch stop we realized that we were now in a tiny country where you can gain a lot of ground so we pushed on to Pana. After descending a super long hill we drove through the busy narrow streets looking for a campground. We found one up a deserted back alley and opted for the fancy looking place further up. We ended up with a beautiful site right on the lake with, as always, no one else around.

San Pedro, Lago de Atitlan
After the long descent into Pana we were a bit nervous about how the road would be getting into San Pedro. We wanted to head there to possibly take Spanish classes as Pana was just too hectic for us. The next morning we went into Town and asked how the road was. Two of the answers we got were: “there is no road” and “I drove it once and won’t do it again...it’s too steep and narrow”. Then finally one guy assured us that it was paved and driveable so we decided to go for it. Two white knucked hours later we had conquered the beast. It was definitely steep and had the tightest switchbacks we’ve ever driven. It also wound through a few confusing towns where twice we went the wrong way on one way narrow cobbled stone streets, but we made it!! We were rewarded with an awesome little lake town where people still dress in traditional clothing and speak their native tongue. We quickly signed up for language classes starting the next day and decided on a home stay with a local family. At 5:00 that night the mother, Rosa came and met us at the school and we piled her in the van and drove up the steep streets to her house where luckily they had a driveway for Patience to have a well deserved rest. The school, the homestay and the town were so perfect that one week very quickly turned into two. The school was called La Cooperativa and it had an amazing garden scattered with individual palapas overlooking the lake. The school helps out local families in need and we were able to visit three of the families our last day of school to deliver them much needed food. These families are mainly single women with children or childless widows. One of the things that struck us the most is how happy everyone is even though most of them have next to nothing. Definitely a lesson to be learned by all. Our brains were crammed full of Spanish grammar for four hours every morning fuelled by coffee and a break time snack. In the afternoons we drank local coffee and ate sweets while doing our homework in funky lakeside cafes, watched some local basketball games, took salsa lessons, watched Spanish movies, went running and did lot’s of yoga. The family we stayed with were super nice and Rosa and her daughter Karina stuffed us to capacity with enormous portions of amazing meals three times a day. Our favourites were the panqueques with fresh fruit, homemade tortillas (I can still hear the clapping sound of them being prepared) and fried platanos. We even had our own private bathroom and bedroom with a tv to watch cheesy Spanish shows on. They also hosted two fiestas that we were able to help out at by serving tamales and coffee to the locals who thought that we were just hilarious. The only downside was the celebratory fireworks that started at five am and continued nonstop throughout the entire day. Our hearts will never be the same. On the weekends we went on a canopy tour, visited San Marcos, hiked the Nariz de Indio and the San Pedro Volcano. We spent a lot of time with Tyler a guy from Arizona who was a great hiking partner and full of funny one liners. San Pedro was the perfect place to learn and hang out, but after two weeks it was definitely time to get moving. On Sunday morning we got up early, packed up the van and went to leave when we heard a strange new noise, uhoh. We had to leave our homestay so we drove down the hill and started investigating. We ended up getting some amazing help from Indy a motorcycle mechanic and narrowed it down to a heater fan that was running continuously for some reason and found the relay that would turn it off. It was too late to leave at this point so we headed to the pool for some amazing bbq’d ribs and smoked pork. Some friends we’d met earlier in the week kindly let us park in their driveway for the night. So we were able to relax, play some poker and cuddle with their new puppy.

Close to Montericco
The next morning with the relay unplugged we were ready to reconquer the crazy hill on the way back up. This was way less stressful then the drive down and we were back on the PanAmerican again. First stop was at a local mechanic shop where they tested the relay and then proceeded to try and diagnose our problem, but we could tell right away that this was a bad idea. We distracted them before they caused too much damage with our non functional horn and they got to work on that instead. At first they couldn’t get it to work and then they couldn’t get it not to work and finally we settled on non functional, but with an idea of what we could do later. Although they still tried to rip us off and we had to talk them down to 50% of what they were asking for a job not done. Then we were off to the beach. Once again we managed to avoid all the major cities and rolled into Montericco before dark. At the end of the road we were faced with an expensive boat ride to get to the beach so we decided to turn around and found an abandoned campground. We took a much needed shower, watched some locals play soccer and then hid out from the mosquitos in Patience.We went to bed really early in order to rest up for another busy border crossing.