Santa Catarina Palopo, Lake Atitlan

Next stop for us was Lake Atitlan, staying in a small town called Santa Catarina Palopo for five days. The three hour journey saw us winding up the mountains that surround Lake Atitlan before winding back down again, the landscape was stunning and so varied. The highest elevation we reached on the drive was 2650m (Ben Nevis is 1345m), altitude sickness can kick in at 2500m but we weren’t at altitude long enough to feel any effects. We rented an airb&b with great views of the lake and surrounding volcanoes (San Pedro, Toliman and Atitlan), it also had its own hot-tub that the children were overjoyed about! Lake Atitlan itself is an old caldera with a surface area of 50 square miles and an average depth of over 150m.

The town was quite a sleepy affair, which suited us as we wanted to slow the pace a little, focus on some home-schooling and have a bit of a rest.
We spent our days gazing out over the lake whilst the children played, walked to the town and explored the back streets and climbed the hill behind our b&b for event better views. There was an abandoned church further up the hill from us, we couldn’t quite work out its provenance but it was an interesting site to explore (particularly for the children who love to roam). The main entertainment during our stay was a helicopter that regularly landed at the hotel next to us, it appeared to ship guests from one side of the lake to the other. Its trajectory was always directly towards us before heading to the landing pad next door, this excited Elana and left Bert shaking in his boots (he’s a little sensitive to loud noise at present). No swimming for us in the lake though as it is highly contaminated with fertiliser from run off from the slopes and raw sewerage!

So after a relaxing five days it was time to pack up and head to Guatemala City where we’d be catching an early flight out to Costa Rica. Guatemala City isn’t the safest of places so we didn’t venture far out of the hotel, using it purely as a stopover ahead of our flight. The hotel did have a good swimming pool winning us brownie points from Elana!

We really enjoyed our time in Guatemala, it was different from Mexico and Belize but also familiar. We found the people friendly, the surroundings safe and the landscapes varied and beautiful, Helen certainly got to geek out on her geology background with the amount of volcanoes we got to see! It was great to see such varied flora and fauna, many of which we’d never seen in its natural environment. As always Elana came out on top wildlife spotting with her sharp-eyes!Read more