I decided to do a three day trek from Xela to Lake Atitlan with an awesome organization called Quetzaltrekkers. Volunteers guide hikes and give all of the profits to a local orphanage. Over the three days we stayed in some isolated communities. Extracurricular activities included sleeping in a municipal building next to to a church with strange bells that would ring at all hours of the night, charcoal saunas, and passing through a town where the Children of the Corn could have been filmed.
Lake Atitlan is basically an old volcano that decided to collapse and fill up with water. I decided that taking an altitude diving course was a good excuse to get underwater again. Somehow a year has passed since my last dive...
Atitlan:
After six days at the lake I met up with a good friend with hittheroad.ca and he was crazy enough to rent a car for the week. During this time the small Nissan would go places where I would never thought anything less than a 4x4 could possibly go...
This is the ¨ferry¨ crossing in Sayaxché. Note the one man under the tiki umbrella controlling the outboard motor that keeps the modified barge from washing off the face of the planet.
This is a stuck between a truck and a cliff place moment. What this picture isn´t capturing is the shear cliff on one side, and the huge piece of mountain where the road once was before it collapsed. This alternative route was created by the land owner who charges 5 quetzals (about 60 cents) to everyone that passes through.
