Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

After several days in Antigua, we decide to head out to Lake Atitlan. This is really an amazing place, a beautiful lake surrounded in mountains and volcanoes. Depending on how active the volcano is, the whole area can covered in mist as it was when we arrived. We arrived via a shuttle bus full of backpackers and. I had a great chat with a cool American chick about ‘everything alternative’ and listened to some enthusiastic folk music from the dreadlocked musos in the back. They even had a didgeridoo...awesome :-)

The lake at San Pedro

The shuttle landed in San Pedro, which is the Guatemalan mecca for people who want to sit around smoke weed, or other drugs. Not our plan to land here, and we missed the last boat to another town, so we bunkered down for the night listening to doof –doof next door and heavily influenced tourists whooping loudly in the street. Sounds bad, but it’s generally safe and most people are pretty ‘mellow’.

Leaving San Pedro

The following day we heard about a ‘chocolate shaman’ over in San Marco who was holding a ceremony that day. We jumped on an overcrowded boat and paid twice as much as the locals to get to San Marco, the new-agey capital of Guatemala. Due to the ‘energies’ here, there are loads of alternative healing, meditation, massage, courses etc that can be found. This is a typical noticeboard around town….

Anyone for riding the'cosmic transporter'? LOL :-)

We checked into a gorgeous (and cheap) hostel. Most of the buildings here utilize natural building materials and have creative, artistic features using recycled materials, super cool!

Our hotel - super cute :-)

We eventually found the chocolate shaman ‘Keith’ who is actually a really interesting guy. You can read about his work here ceremonialcacao.blogspot.com

Here we loaded up on hot chocolate and were guided into an awesome meditation. I completely unwinded here and again found myself thinking about what I want to 'create'. Not much else to report here. Spent a lot of time catching up on sleep, more sleep and taking it easy in the beautiful garden surrounds :-)

Sunrise at San Marco