Our stay in Chichi and witnessing a local festival was the highlight of our trip in Guatemala. From here, we had another short but adventurous drive to Lake Atitlan area. But before that, we had to drive through Chichi on a Sunday which is a market day to get to the main road. It easily took us two hours to get to the other side of town.
After 3 hours on a bumpy windy road, we arrived at lake Atitlan and this time, the place that we planned to stay actually worked out! A beautiful big grassy area next to the lake Atitlan with stunning views. It belonged to a hotel next door and we got a deal for three days so we set up camp and hoped to have three peaceful days in lake Atitlan to enjoy the cooler weather and use it as a base camp to explore the area.
There are lots of communities living around lake Atitlan. Our base camp was in walking distance from the boat terminal of Panajachel which is a bigger town comparing to the rest of towns around the lake. The easiest way to commute around the lake is by boat so we got on the water taxis the next day to explore some of these little towns and villages.
The first one we explored was San Pedro La Laguna. Coming off the boat, the first few streets going up in the hills were packed with hostels and trendy cafes and lots of young backpackers. We had our fancy cappuccino and Croissant. They just looked so good and we were craving for something like this since we haven’t had a proper pastry and coffee since Mexico.
Walking past the hostels and backpacker’s lifestyle blocks, another layer of town reveals itself, the real San Pedro with beautiful markets, churches and a normal Guatemalan life goes by. San Pedro was beautiful and the view from the top of the hill was just stunning.
From there, we took another short boat ride to visit the next town, San Juan La Laguna. The vibe there was completely different. The whole town was set for tourists. all the streets were covered with colorful umbrellas and baskets and there were only souvenir shops and restaurants on both sides. Everything was triple the price of elsewhere in Guatemala and even though we were starving we decided to get out of there and have lunch somewhere local.
We did went uphill to see the real San Juan and found a beautiful church on top of the hill with lots of locals in it but the local market and vibe wasn’t as lively as San Pedro.
For the next day, we decided to sit and relax by the lake and recover. Later in the day, another overlander couple joined us. A young german couple who where doing the same route as us so we’ve spent the rest of the day sharing stories and having drinks. It was a Christmas night and we had an amazing firework over the Lake Atitlan at mid night!! It was so magical to watch it from our bed!
The next morning, it was Christmas day and we thought, that’s a perfect opportunity to hit the road toward our next destination, Antigua. The roads were not as busy as usual and we had a peaceful drive to Antigua. We set up camp in a camp site which is right in the middle of city and it was packed with other overlanders. We’ve never seen so many overlanders in one place, since we started our trip.
Most of the shops and restaurants were closed on the Christmas day so we went to a fancy italian restaurant with live music for lunch! As we didn’t have much options left! I find it fascinating that all these fancy European themed restaurants and cafes pops up in tourist destinations. People really travel and spend all the money to get to Guatemala to go and have a fancy Italian food!
The other thing is as soon as you reach these places, even low key cafes and restaurants add 10% service and tip to their bills, really?
Anyway we had our lunch and explored Antigua a bit. It is really beautiful and well preserved. It is really a gem in Guatemala and the volcano in the background just adds to its charm. We were there during Christmas so it makes sense that there were so many tourists around too. Our story of being sick in Guatemala just continued too. We entered Guatemala and Amir had a Flu, then I got the same Flu from him. Now that I was recovering he had some sort of food poisoning. So we took it slow in Antigua.
After few days in Antigua, we headed toward Guatemala city. We didn’t stop to see the city because we were planning to come back. More on this later. But we had another point of interest close to the Guatemala city. A great workshop that we were in touch with since long time ago and we had some spare part shipped to them. So we had to have a stop to get the spare parts and do the maintenance. It was such a pleasure to meet these guys at SpecGarageGT. They have an stunning place for overlanders to stay while they do maintenance on their rigs. They are passionate about Land Cruisers and were kind enough to pick up our spare parts from the post office prior to our arrival. We had a great stop there and meet other overlanders there as well.
Having our car sorted, we headed toward our last stop in Guatemala, Tikal. By now we were mostly in higher altitudes in Guatemala and had great cooler weathers but getting close to Tikal, the heat and humidity was getting to us. And we were there in the coolest time of the year. Can not imagine how hot it will get in summer time.
Tikal is one of the biggest cities of the Mayan empires and it is one of the best preserved ones that we’ve seen. It is located in Tikal national forest which is a dense rainforest with a great diversity of animals and birds and it adds to its mystic vibes.
We set up camp in the national park, right at the entrance to the Tikal archeological site. It was surprisingly quiet but too hot and humid. The following morning, we left really early to see as much as we could before the arrival of the crowd and the heat.
It simply was stunning to walk through a dense jungle and see these massive pyramids. It was magical and peaceful but also sweaty and hot. We have spent hours but we could only see a fraction of it. It is really a big site. But we were happy with what we’ve seen.
And after visiting Tikal, our time in Guatemala was over, at least for now. While we were in Guatemala , we had to change our plans because of our shipping arrangements. We will get to this in more details in the next post. From Tikal, it is only few hours of drive to the border with Belize, our next destination. In the next post, we’ll enter Belize and the next country on our journey. Can you guess which country? Till then take care and have fun.
