meanwhile, back to Lake Atitlan...

I think this is Maximon, in a movable altar, but I'm not sure.  We were having dinner the first night in Pana, on the Calle Santander, and we heard a bell ringing and fireworks.  This place isn't big enough for a band.  I walked out on the street, and saw these kids running to each business on the street, a man with a bucket of incense preceeding them, and the bell ringers before him.  The bellringers let the businesses know the incence man was coming to cleanse the place, and then the little altar was hauled in.  This was all done in a run, and I was lucky to catch this photo.  I saw every business owner, including the comedors, food vendors, tucking quetzales inside the altar.  Today is Kings Day, so I'm of the opinion there is some connection.  I never could see inside the altar, between the small crowd following the bearers and the smoke from the incense.

 A field of onions, on the shore of the lake, just outside Panajachel. We walked up hill out of town, to see an old coffee plantation that was being retaken by the jungle. There is a nature preserve there now, complete with the old ruins of the finca buildings and old roads.

Our plan was to hit Pana, spend one night and move on to one of the villages south or west. Stuart's back was a little twitchy, and we decided to spend the day walking, and move on tomorrow. The lanchas run constantly from one of two piers in town. From one pier, you can get a ride to all the villages and some private piers west and a little south. The another pier, you can get a ride to Santiago, the largest town, on the south side of the lake. Some people stay in Pana, making day trips to the little villages, but Pana is not our kind of town.




By late afternoon, we headed for one of the lakeshore restaurants. This will be our only chance to see the sunset on the lake, since our we've decided to go to San Marcos for a while...it's on the west end of the lake, and the sunset will be behind the mountains.

There are precious few tourists here, as in every other place we've been, even Oaxaca. I don't know why. Maybe the economy, maybe the distorted news reports of violence in Guatemala and Mexico. All I know is that the local businesses that rely on tourism are suffering, and that affects the economy of the entire village. We spend the late afternoon at a pretty palapa restaurant, one of about 15 along the lake front, and I can count on both hands the tourists at them. Nevertheless, we have a nice afternoon, I drew in my journal, Stuart read, and we quaffed a couple of beers. We decided to have dinner here. The waiter brought a menu, but I asked him what was the freshest. His face just lighted up, and told us about a fish just in...NOT a lake fish. Too much contamination for me.

We watched the boats come in, with only one or two people on them, and watched the captains clean up at the end of the day. We bought a bag of plums from a vendedore ambulante, a walking vendor. It seems totally wrong to us, but here, the walking vendors always walk through the restaurants, trying to sell clothes, shoes, fruit and vegetables and just about anything that can be carried.