Lake Atitlan, coastal towns and Chichicastenango

Yesterday and today were ‘excursion’ days (so to speak). Yesterday we arranged for a guide to take us on a boat tour to three small coastal towns across Lake Atitlan - San Juan, San Pedro and Santiago. Luckily the water was calm and the distances not too far between the towns! They were all quite different - San Juan seemed the most colourful and showed the most effort in welcoming visitors, San Pedro offered the best vistas of the lake, and Santiago the most traditional and authentically Maya. Our guide, Luis, is a local Maya who genuinely wanted to share his love of country and culture with us. One of the highlights, besides learning about the local coffee, chocolate, and weaving cultures, Luis took us to see ‘Maximon’, a revered Maya deity and folk saint represented in various forms by the Maya peoples of several towns in the Guatemalan Highlands. He moves to a different house each year and Luis wanted us to see him. He’s not what you might expect - he’s a mischievous folk saint with origins in indigenous Maya and Spanish Catholic beliefs. We didn’t linger in the house as it was quite full of people paying homage, but were truly intrigued!
Today we caught a shuttle van here in Panajachel that took us away from the lake about an hour’s drive to the town of Chichicastenango. It’s known for its twice weekly public market that draws people, vendors and buyers from all over the region. It was massive, with an incredible variety of things to see and purchase - textiles, vegetables, kitchen utensils, and lots of trinkets. Once we exhausted our wandering through the streets of the market we made a diversion to find the city cemetery. It’s full of brightly coloured tombstones that cover the hillside, looking amazingly festive!
Tomorrow we’ll leave Panajachel and take another shuttle van to Guatemala City. We’ll spend the night there and early Saturday morning catch a flight to Flores in the north.