Day 38: San Cristobal, Mexico
Tupac stood me up the next morning, which is likely for the best as I wasn’t murdered but alone again. I was running out of things to do in San Cristobal.
After taking a horse ride up the mountain to see a Zapatista “village” that was really a town equipped with everything, including souvenir shops, I realized it was time to say goodbye to Mexico and hello to Guatemala.
There didn’t appear to be an easy border crossing with public transit so I purchased a ticket to Antigua on a tourist shuttle that cost more than my daily budget at $36.
It was an eight hour ride and somewhere along the way I decided to get off in Panajachel with the rest of the minivan occupants.
Guatemalan Food
Panajachel has been compared to Koh San Road in Thailand and I can see why.
The main street is filled with locals selling bucketloads of bracelets, key chains and any other souvenirs.
As you walk down the street you are bombarded with people offering tours and kids selling 10 bracelets for 3 dollars.
Late afternoon when the sun begins to set, things start to slow down, the bracelet kids become tired and new friends approach you to see if you’re in need of drugs for the night.
The town isn’t very eventful but the lake it is on, Atitlan, is beautiful.
Surrounded by two volcanoes and many mountains, the lake is a volcanic crater and has many hot springs because of it.
The next day I woke up early to spend the day with Isabel, a German pharmacist on a 10-week vacation along with Australian Sally and Kate from Liverpool who were on vacation from working in Whistler.
We had originally hoped to rent bicycles to go to see hot springs but it turned out that renting a boat with a driver was strangely less expensive.
The driver took us to one of the towns on the lake and after looking at some of the woven goods we headed to the hot springs.
But were surprised to see that they weren’t steaming pools of water but just a section of the lake that had hot water.
Guatemalan Desserts
The scenery was beautiful and it was nice to share it with other people.
While I had only known the other girls for 24 hours it reminded me of hanging out with friends from home, taking lots of photos and just being silly.
And with this day I officially ended my longstanding streak of being alone.
Got to say that I am happy that Tupac stood you up…..
ouch….
Isn’t all the water warm in Mexico? What type of tempatures are we talking about in these ‘hot springs’
I’m in Guatemala now. In some parts it was bathtub, scald your feet hot.
I am happy you have made friends. I was getting sad thinking of you waiting for Tupac.
Hooorahh for friends!!
Never alone, with a blog and a healthy audience.
(I mean a good number of visitors, not if the audience is diseased or what have you. Erm).
But yes. Another pair of eyes and another brain behind them – another perspective, and someone to share everything with.
Glad for ya. And that 100-megawatt grin shows that you are too. 🙂
Last year I went up to Orkney (north of Scotland) for 10 days, and 5 of those days were spent almost entirely solitarily. And it started driving me gently bananas.
People are a big part of good travel.
Arguably the biggest.
I got drunk in hotsprings once. It was awesome.
When I visited Panajachel it was foggy and it rained a bit. Unfortunatelly i never got to see the lake in all its splendor- bummer!
Atitlan for me was just ok-ish. Maybe it had something to do with shitty Flores. Fav. lake-Titicaca! Its a beautiful lake though. Yay for travel buddies!
We ended up buying a shuttle as well just so we wouldn’t have to deal with much – but to Xela only. I think you got a better deal with the $36 all the way to Antigua. 😛
Yeah in the end it is only a couple of bucks, much better than when I tried to do it all independently.