Panajachel, Guatemala

Lake Atitlan and surrounding volcanos.
The morning departure was 7AM as we were headed to Panajachel (about 2 hours west of Antigua). Panajachel is nestled in the Guatemalan highlands and is surrounded by three volcanoes (Toliman, Atitlan, and San Pedro) and Lake Atitlan. From Pana, we hopped on a boat and visited the indigenous villages on Lake Atitlan.

This was the first time we got ripped off because when we bought our tickets for the boats, we purchased them from some guys that greeted us just before we got to the docks. They wanted $50 US each to take us to 3 islands and Sarah and I definitely didn't have that much money. We changed the route to a less traveled one and got the price down to $25 per person (which was still WAY more than we wanted to spend). We ended up with a private boat and our own personal driver... but we later found out that price should be $8.00 US per person... nice... stupid tourists! ;) We were practically the ONLY tourists in the villages we visited which was awesome because we were able to see the indigenous people performing their daily activities. The women on these islands are famous for their typical Mayan dress and beautiful hand-woven materials. I had to buy a couple of them because they were so pretty!

For just a minute I thought we were gonna be in trouble because the boat guy pulled up to this random spot on the lake and told us that it was a "hot spot" in the water and we should get out and feel it. We didn't have on our swimsuits but we figured we might as well and jumped in with all of our clothes on! Just then, the driver turned the engine of the boat back on and started driving away from us... then he picked up my purse ... we were just like "crap we're about to get our stuff stolen and get left here in the middle of this huge lake..." but it turns out he was just moving it so that it would get wet when got back in the boat. Phew!