Thursday 19^th April: Xela – San Pedro de la Laguna

Today we headed to Lake Atitlan for some rest and relaxation!  It was about 3 hours on the bus through some amazing scenery – particularly as we took the jagged blind corners as the road headed downhill towards the lake. I found myself praying that the brakes on the Chicken bus were going to hold up – otherwise we were going to be dead ducks – it was a long way down the mountain! Finally we arrived on the side of the road at San Pedro de la Laguna. It was a bit of a hike to our accommodation a little bit out of town, but it was totally worth the effort, the place was like a little haven from the busyness of the the town, with hammocks for reading my book and lots of flowers in the garden.

Friday 20^th April:  San Pedro de la Laguna (Tzununa)

Heading off for some adventures this morning we took the boat across the lake from San Pedro to a small town on the other side of the lake called Tzununa. Stefan wanted to visit an organic farm that had been set up over there as he was interested in setting up something similar one day in Puerto Rico. It was a nice trip across the lake with blue sky and sun and the mountains looming up on all sides. The lake itself is huge – some 8 by 18km in dimension and is as deep as 320m at some points. Its probably not the best place for swimming as almost all of the sewage from the surrounding towns is dumped directly into the lake without being treated in any way. Still that doesn’t stop the place from being amazingly beautiful!  Unfortunately there wasn’t much to see at the organic farm as it was quite small. We did get to have a bit of a look around and some of the workers showed us to a track leading to a nice waterfall. It was only about 10 minutes further up the creek. The waterfall was interesting because at some point a huge rock had lodged itself in between two sides of the cliff face and now the water from the creek must squeeze its way past in order to make its way down the mountain. It was a really beautiful and unique spot. Then of course we were both wondering if it would be possible to climb up on top of the rock! It was a bit of a precarious scramble up there but we managed to do it! Up the top was another waterfall just as nice. Unfortunately the drop down to the big rock was too high and both of us chickened out of jumping down. We headed back down the mountain and stopped for lunch at an amazing placed called Bambu – which had a beautiful yoga platform with a lovely view out over Lake Atitlan and also served the most amazing salads and smoothies ever!