This morning Kalya and I headed across the lake to Santiago Atitlan, a village beautifully perched on a bay off the main body of Lake Atitlan. Guidebooks say that Santiago is a "more traditional sort of Mayan village." In our experience, traditional must mean utterly impoverished.
When you arrive in Santiago, you're swarmed by people selling you weavings and scarves and bracelets and necklaces and everything you can imagine for next to nothing. You're herded up the main street into the town, which is packed with kitsch and people trying to wheel and deal you.
We quickly ducked off this main drag, on a quest for Maximon, a bizarre statue which began as an (ancient?) pagan symbol and appears to be little less than a tourist destination for a town struggling to survive.
The Maximon experience was rather spectucular, as he is hidden in secret and guarded by many who look to separate you from your cash in exchange for the experience. Once inside his room, there are candles, incense, various libations, and a statue wearing a big cowboy hat dressed in the oddest clothes. Pictures did capture the experience pretty well. Check Picasa.
The town itself feels like it's dying, and once you get off the tourist strip, the people look the part. Things seem much, much worse here than in Xela. People look physically ill, and their living conditions are most likely to blame. There is something nauseating about this level of poverty when juxtaposed with a few dozen tourists sporting DSLR's, and I include myself in the indicted bunch. We left Santiago after about two hours.
Back in Pana I had some delicious sausage tacos (I know it sounds gross, but it wasn't, and I'm probably going back for dinner). Then we set off in search of a motorcycle to rent.
Some background here: last time I was at a lake in Latin America, it was Lake Titicaca and I was in Bolivia. On a whim, I rented a motorcycle to drive along the shore, and it was one of many highlights of the trip. Today I once again found myself along the shore of a beautiful, high-altitude lake in Latin America, and I had to repeat the experience.
It took about an hour of asking random bicycle repair stores, bakeries, and many, many other people to find a place that rented scooters. It seems that motorcycles proper cannot be rented in Pana.
They recommended that Kalya and I share one scooter, because Kalya had never driven a motorcycle before. We were unsure about that, but in the end it was fine and we still had a great time.
We rented it for two hours and set off towards Santa Catalina and San Antonio, about 8-9 miles east of Pana, on a delightful road cut into the cliffs around the lake. The views were delightful, and motorcycles are always fun. Near the turnaround, we posed for gangster photos, which you can see as today's photo.
I uploaded ten new pictures today, so don't forget to check them out too. Today was a beautiful, partly cloudy day, and so far it has only rained for about 15 minutes. It was a really good weekend to come to the lake.
Tomorrow we head to the famous Sunday market at Chichicastenango (Chichi), then back to Xela before dinner. Hasta mañana!
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