Atitlan, Where the Rainbow Gets Its Colors and Panajachel, Where the Gringoes Go

Today was our first day on the amazing Lago de Atitlan. As Aldous Huxley once wrote of the lake, "It really is too much of a good thing." Rimmed by a number of volcanoes, sparkly and startlingly blue, the lake is absolutely beautiful. I’ve heard Atitlan translated as "the place where the rainbow gets its colors", which is understandable once you’ve seen it.

The lake lies in a gigantic volcanic crater, formed in four stages over the last 11 million years. The lake was created during an eruption 1.8 million years ago, which was detected from Florida to Ecuador. The lake fills the bottom of the caldera, reaching a depth of about 2,000 feet. It has no surface outlets, only underground outlets to the Pacific Ocean. Interestingly enough, some Mormons believe that the Lago is the lake mentioned in the Book of Mormon, which is probably a powerful selling point for all of the evangelists who live around the area.

The most popular tourist town on the lake is Panajachel, often affectionately referred to as Gringotenago. It used to be a huge hippie town, but during the civil war it cleared out pretty quickly as the army terrorized the local Kaqchikel and Tz'utuhil populations. Fortunately (and unfortunately), the lake is so beautiful that tourism was soon revived. Panajachel has a huge assortment of international restaurants, bars, artesania and New-Age practitioners.

In the morning we went to Reserva Natural Atitlán, a preserve a little way out of town. It was a nice walk around the grounds of the historic Hacienda de San Buenaventura, through the forest, up and down stone stairs and across suspension bridges. While there wasn’t much in the way of animals, (except spider monkeys!), there were a huge variety of plants and a wonderful butterfly garden with glasswing butterflies, among other things.

In the afternoon we went for a temazcal, or Mayan sauna, at our hotel. The temazcal was much like the one I had on my hike to the lake, but with a higher ceiling, no tar, and the ability to breathe. As it turns out, with oxygen and drinking water, temazcal is actually a fantastic experience.

After our temscal we moved on to Santiago Atitlan, another town across the lake. While we all wished we had a bit more time in Pana, we were also ready to go. The gringofication was exemplified when the lancha captain charged us twice as much as the local passengers. While this particular captain explained that it was because the others were frequent riders, a fair explanation, other captains would insist that the others were paying the same price despite my protests and profanity.