Notable Times: Guatemala 2: Journey to Lake Atitlán (Zip Lining and San Antonio Palopó)

On Saturday, August 13, 2022, we wended our way from Antigua, Guatemala to Lake Atitlán.

Along the way, we saw a lot of fun Guatemalan sights, such as gals in traditional (tipico) clothing riding scooters.

It is common for people to ride in the back of pickups like this one as a cheap form of transportation.

We even saw cows in the back of a pickup a couple times. It seems like these could tip over if the cows leaned wrong on a corner (!).

It is always fascinating to see gals in traditional clothing carrying everything on their heads.

We followed Google Map's suggestion to take highway RN-1 instead of the international Central America highway, CA-1, because it was about the same time and much shorter. One nice thing about this is that we got the "scenic" route, where we got to see the little towns and the people with stuff on their heads and such, so that was cool.

One of the down sides, however, was that it meant we had to squeeze through some tight spots in town and go over the terrible speed bumps on which we often bottomed out. Still, it gave us a chance to see the small towns and get a feel for the the lives of the people there.

Sadly, Jason was sick that day, and the Kartchners had to pull over numerous times for him to throw up, so the winding scenic route was especially rough for them.

In the town of Patzún, highway 1 suddenly became a one-way road, and Google Maps kept insisting that we go down that road the wrong way, while the alternate roads were all tiny and terrible (like a steep, narrow, bumpy dirt road with obstacles, at one point).

Google Street view of one-way road the wrong way.

But the most exciting part was when we arrived at a place where a sign said "Peligroso" ("Danger") because the bridge was out!

We sat there wondering what in the world we were supposed to do at that point. We had just driven an hour from the other highway to get here, and couldn't imagine going back the way we came (though at least that one-way road would be going the right way! :)

But we didn't dare drive through the river! That would be crazy!

It reminded us of this clip from the VeggieTales "Jonah" movie:

As we pondered our predicament, another car came by and calmly drove through the river to get to the other side. That seemed to be our only option, so after we watched one more do it, too, we decided, "When in Guatemala..." and took the plunge.

Will we make it? Watch here to find out! I took a video from the front seat and Jared and Sienna both took one from the back:

We actually felt very victorious when we came out the other side.

A few minutes later, the Kartchners had the same experience, with a similar tune:

Much of the rest of the drive was gorgeous.

In fact, I never got over how beautiful and green the area was.

We stopped at one overlook and pulled over to take some pictures. The Kartchners came along a few minutes later and pulled over by us. We all excitedly talked about having to drive through a river.

After our trip, I looked on Google Maps, and found that sure enough, the "street view" takes you right through the river, too. (There's even a guy in the street view picture adding gravel to the "road", which is probably what makes it reasonable to cross). I wonder what people do when it's raining and the river is high...

The Kartchners got a picture of our car driving through an area I referred to a "Mordor", which was probably recovering from a landslide.

I had a little video of this same stretch, and Linette said something funny:

Corn is the main crop in the area, so we saw lots of that as we drove along.

It was fun to see the bright colors and ladies with baskets on their heads as we drove through the little towns.

The guys don't wear traditional clothes as often as the ladies, but we saw one once in a while.

We eventually arrived in the town of Panajachel, which is one of the bigger towns on Lake Atitlán. We had to wend our way through some crowded streets and even drive right through a market to get through there.

Zip Lining in Panajachel

At long last, we arrived at Reserva Natural (nature reserve), where we had a reservation to do some zip lining. Jason was feeling too sick to participate, so Roger (bless his heart) stayed with him.

Meanwhile, the rest of us marched off to our doom.

We all got set up with harnesses and such, and then the guy gave safety instructions in Spanish while a guy who grew up in Guatemala roughly translated for the group. Linette threw in a couple of clarifications when needed.

With that, we were ready to go.

We had quite a climb up the hill, including several fun suspension bridges.

We saw a couple of other people participating in the "cable biking".

There was a cool waterfall that we saw on the way up from one of the suspension bridges.

We got an occasional glimpse of the lake through the thick trees.

We had to duck to climb through these rocks on the way up.

Linette befriended a gal from Canada (originally from Africa) who was traveling alone through Guatemala.

I made friends with three people from Israel. The guy by me (who reminds me of Dan Robinhold) is from Tel Aviv. His girlfriend is from 20 minutes north of there. They met this other guy from Israel during their trip. I had a wonderful time talking with them the whole way up.

This was our whole grip of adventurers.

Zip lining there was awesome. Sometimes you could see a waterfall on one side, and on the other, a panoramic view of Lake Atitlán, surrounded by volcanoes.

Sharon whooped the loudest when we zip lined.

The gal from Israel was scared enough on her first zip line that she applied too much brake and got stuck, so our guide had to zoom out and grab her. Sienna got stuck once, too, just from being so light.

We took lots of clips of people zip lining. I took the fun parts and made the compilation video below. (The people are small sometimes, so I'd recommend full-screen on this one).

After feeling cool from zip lining, we all went through a little obstacle course so that we could end the day feeling awkward.

Our two guides were great. In addition to Spanish, both spoke Kaqchikel, an ancient Mayan language. That's what they would speak to each other, and then Spanish to us, with one of our group translating as needed. I was trying to remember what this guide's name was (Luís, it turns out), so I asked Sharon. She couldn't remember, so she asked Roger. He pointed out that he was in the car. Whoops(!).

We enjoyed our zip lining adventure.

After zip lining, we parked at a secure lot, and then walked down the street to get some food at Pollo Campero, the most famous fried chicken restaurant chain in Guatemala. (Pollo Campero means something like "Country Chicken" or even "free-range chicken.").

On the way there, we came across one of our church buildings. I overheard a couple of tourist ladies asking each other what church it was. "It is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," I said.

After we got our food, we carried it back towards the car, and saw that the gate to the church was open, so we went in and sat on the cement to eat, and it felt fun for some reason to be in this place where we felt so comfortable, even with people walking by and looking through the gate at us with curiosity.

Some little kids were playing there, and we gave them some of our fries and chicken pieces. The bishop came out and asked if we wanted to come inside to eat, but we were almost done. It was nice to meet a few of the members.

By the time we got back to the parking lot, it was almost dark, so we continued the trek to our AirBnB. We had to drive along the coast of Lake Atitlán through two little towns, and Google Maps led us astray on numerous occasions, sending us through much narrower roads than necessary, and even trying to get us to drive up a narrow set of stairs at one point!

One time, we went up a street that was so steep that our car stalled. Jared and I jumped out in order to lighten the load, and had to help push the car up. A couple Guatemalan teenage boys ran over to help us, and Linette eventually got the car up to the top of the hill.

Then we realized we were going the wrong way, so we drove back down.

One time, someone was coming the other way, and there wasn't enough room to pass, so we pulled over as far as we could, and the other guy squeezed past us while Linette muttered, "Don't you do it...don't you do it..." Luckily, they didn't scrape us.

Roger & Sharon were in an SUV, and the road was so narrow at one point that they were scraping their tire on one side, and thought they were scraping some aluminum siding on the other side. (We didn't see any damage, though, so it turned out ok).

It was definitely a sketchy, harrowing journey, filled with tight squeezes, massive speed bumps that we often bottomed out on, and uncertainty that we were even going the right way.

At long last, we made it through the last little town and up a dirt road to our AirBnB, where Rogelio (roh-HEE-lee-oh) greeted us with a big smile and guided us down the steep, long driveway to where we could park our cars.

We needed some food for the next day, and hadn't shopped while we were in town, so Rogelio guided me and Linette on a dirt path to a nearby store. They had mostly junk food, but we were able to get some eggs, black beans, orange juice and bread so that we would at least have some breakfast the next morning.

They gave us a sagging cardboard box to carry it in, and I carried it Guatemala style (cheating by using my hands, cuz I didn't want to drop the eggs)

It was very dark there, but we could still see a subtle outline of the volcanoes against the sky, with lights from the surrounding villages reflecting off of the lake.

The Lake House

We all woke up on Sunday morning to a view of Lake Atitlán. Every bedroom in the house has a view of the lake. For example, from our room, this is the view I had while literally lying in bed.

The house faced west, so the sunrise produced indirect colors for us.

Here is a view from another bedroom.

And couple more.

Here is the main living room. As the kids came down in the morning, we'd say, "Sorry we couldn't get a place with a better view...."

OH MY GOSH!! The view was spectacular!!

The house was built into the face of a cliff, and there was exposed rock in several places throughout the house.

Just behind the wall in the picture above were these two spare beds, which could come in handy while listening to church through the windows...

The kitchen was green and yellow, as was much of the house. (And we appreciated the big jug of drinking water there).

The beds had covers made from traditional local textiles, and the paintings reflected the local art as well.

Like I said, every room had a view of the lake.

Our room was pretty fancy-shmancy, and had its own office area.

There was a roof you could climb out on from the windows or balconies, where the kids sometimes went to take pictures.

Mike captured this view of a volcano through the round window above the stairs.

On the main floor there was an observation deck where you could sit and look at a 180-degree panoramic view of the entire lake, surrounded by several volcanoes.

I sat there that morning and tried to read my scriptures. I found, however, that I needed to hold my phone up high or my eyes kept wandering up to look at the lake, because I couldn't take my eyes off of the view.

The hills around the lake were lush and green.

Speaking of which, Jason was still feeling green around the gills. Sharon and Roger were pretty worried about him. Back when their whole family got COVID, Jason had later developed MIS-C, a rare inflammatory syndrome, which landed him in the hospital and was pretty scary. They were worried that if this was the same thing, then by the time he needed to go to the hospital, they would be too far from home. They looked into what it would take to have someone fly home with him, and it was going to take a couple thousand dollars of flights plus repeating that arduous drive to Guatemala City, all of which sounded horrible.

We sent out a call to our families to pray for Jason, and then Sharon was able to speak to her doctor in Utah, who reassured her that there were not really any cases of MIS-C recurring in children who had recovered from it, so it probably wasn't that. Not long after that, Jason suddenly started feeling great, and we were all relieved!

In other fun news, Mike found a scorpion in his room and killed it.

And if you left any food or crumbs out, there was no need to worry--swarms of speedy little ants would discover it and haul it off immediately! (So we tried to keep all food in the kitchen, and the ants weren't a problem when there wasn't food).

It was Sunday, so Linette and Sharon dressed up a little, and we had a lovely time reading scriptures while enjoying the view.

Sienna's "Be Real" for that day captured a cute picture of the gals preparing a traditional Guatemalan breakfast of scrambled eggs and refried black beans.

Meanwhile, I was walking down the steep, zig-zagged path to the lake, enjoying the view all the way down.

When I came back up, I found everyone sitting down to a lovely breakfast.

Fortunately, we had just enough Internet to be able to watch Sharon & Roger's sacrament meeting, where a young man named Eli Rossiter was speaking just before leaving on his mission—to Guatemala!

People watched with various levels of consciousness.

Linette and I also watched our ward's sacrament meeting, where Justin Charlesworth was reporting on his mission to Canada.

San Antonio Palopó

After "church", we decided to go on a walk to explore the nearby town of San Antonio Palopó.

We went on a dirt road for part of the way, and then it turned into the more typical pavers.

The town is built on a hill facing the lake, so there are some steep stairways in some places.

It was cool how these stairs had a little waterfall next to them so the stairs would stay dry.

Shaylee wore Pants of Many Colors.

This tree stump seems to be carefully guarding its collection of junk.

Tin roofs are common there. Here you can see some of the traditional clothing being laid out to dry in the sun.

Each Mayan village has its own distinctive patterns and colors that it uses in its traditional clothing. The clothes aren't identical, as each person uses their creativity to weave in their own ideas and symbols, but many people in Guatemala can look at what someone is wearing and immediately know where they're from.

In San Antonio Palopó, they have dark purples and blues. These were my favorite colors of all I've seen in Guatemala.

There were some fun murals on the walls.

As humble as one might be tempted to think these homes are, you have to admit that they have a better view than most houses in the world.

We wended our way to the main church in town.

It was fun seeing everyone gather in their traditional best for church.

The chapel was small but pretty.

Here is Linette silhouetted in the entrance.

This little gal seemed proud of herself for bringing such a big bundle to this guy. (Her hair was frizzy with static afterwards).

Here are some more gals heading to church.

Tuk-tuks were especially well suited to the narrow streets.

Pickups also went by often, carrying people in the back.

Apparently there was a dog asleep on the other side of this wall...

We saw a lady operating a loom, and went to check it out.

Sharon ended up buying an entire outfit there!

The lady was named Nancy ("NAHN-see"), and she showed how to tie a thing into Sharon's hair.

Tuh-duh! People in the village smiled when they saw Sharon wearing this outfit. The corte is the skirt wrapped around the bottom half. The huipil (WEE-peel) is the blouse.

Sharon got to try out the loom for a second.

Sienna decided to get her hair done there as well.

Sharon and Sienna are tall!

I love the purple flowers.

What a cute town!

There was one hotel in town that served food, so we got empanadas (since that was about their only offering).

We also got some fruit smoothies, and nobody got sick from them, so that was nice.

San Antonio Palopó is known for its ceramics, so we had a look at those, too.

Sharon declared, "I'm supporting the local economy!"

Roger thought, "Oh, great!"

We bought a few things from people on the street as well.

When this gal heard what we wanted, she would run off and find someone who had it and broker a deal. She even arranged a boat for us for the next day's outing.

The sun, clouds and lake interacted nicely on our way back to the house.

Jared got these pictures with the Nikon camera, including one with one of the local fisherman in a traditional little flat-backed canoe.

Roger took a couple of time lapse videos of the lake that evening. This one is 17 seconds long, and it's fun to see the clouds dance around the volcanoes.

The lake house had a "jacuzzi", but we had to tell Rogelio 3 hours in advance when we wanted it to be filled with hot water, and then, although there were jets to circulate the water, the water would eventually cool back off.

So we told him to have it ready for us at 6pm that night. Here is part of the path on the way down to the jacuzzi by the lake.

It was nice and hot when we got in.

Soon, it started pouring rain!

Where's Jason?

There he is!

Here's a little video of us getting rained on in the hot tub.

And one more, when a few more people had arrived.

More people braved the rain to come join us.

Roger brought an umbrella down, and Shaylee opted to stay dry.

We really enjoyed the toasty hot tub while it lasted.

Here's a nice picture of Sienna in the hot tub.

Apparently I was underwater for that picture.

We all swam in the lake for a minute, too, and then jumped back into the hot tub to warm back up.

Well, except for Linette, who decided that warm sounded pretty good.

Roger and Mike watched the pouring rain from above and eventually came down to join us. Roger took a dip in the lake as well.

After awkwardly going up and down the slippery ladder, Shaylee discovered stairs we could have used that go right into the water.

So our hot tub experience was lovely, even with rain and thunder.

The path up to the house was beautiful.

The rain soon stopped, and the lake was calm again as the sun began to set.

We could see lights along the opposite shore, as a thunderstorm roared across the lake. In this picture, you can just see an orange bolt of lightning on the left, reflected off of the lake.