Exploring Lake Atitlan

From the city of Xela it’s only about a 2.5 hour drive to the scenic Lago Atitlan, nestled in a mountainous cloud forest region surrounded by volcanoes. We were super excited to visit.

We headed to the main Xela bus terminal in a £1 Uber, and then some locals helped us find the bus to San Pedro (one of the towns on the lake).

We’d heard about “chicken buses” in central America as being the main forms of public transport here. They are essentially old US school buses (yes, those iconic yellow ones you see in movies!) but they get painted up all snazzy colours and blast out Latino tunes. They are called chicken buses because often people take chickens on them (or, they used to, not so often these days) and you’re packed on them like a coop! However, we’d not taken one yet as all the transport options so far had been colectivos (minivans) or microbuses (like bigger minivans)….

But arriving at Xela terminal was amazing! There were so many chicken buses in the street, surrounded on both sides of the road by a large market. Each bus was painted differently, and they all had their routes painted on the front too.

We found our San Pedro one easily and then just had to wait as all the buses edged forwards in a one-way traffic jam, once at the end of the market road, we headed off at full speed! It was such a good experience racing through the streets, and surprisingly, we found that there was more legroom on these buses than there were on the colectivos or microbuses!

As we neared the lake the roads just got better and better, we turned off the main road towards Santa Clara, and drove down a winding road surrounded by lush green (and seemingly untouched) cloud forest.

Then after Santa Clara we went on one of the windiest and most stunning roads we’ve been on, with steep switchbacks and epic views of the lake and the volcanoes.

We got off the bus at the town of San Pablo, then took a tuktuk for Q20 each to the town of San Marcos.

Lake Atitlan is a big lake and has many smaller towns and villages on the shores, each with it’s own personality and atmosphere. Some are more touristy, some have a backpacker party influence, some are more arty and cultural etc. So deciding which town to base ourselves in was quite difficult really.

Although, I’m reality, all the villages are easily accessible with public boats running between them (or tuktuks, or even buses). So we decided to pick a town based on a few criteria:

• Which one had the best views?
• Which one had a good selection of vegan options?
• Which one could we get a place to stay in budget?

In the end this happened to be the town of San Marcos La Laguna, which is known for being the “hippie” town, with lots of wellness retreats, yoga classes, vegan restaurants and spiritual centres. It’s on the north side of the lake, which means it has perfect views of the volcanoes to the south, and I’d found somewhere nice to stay for £26 a night, with a gorgeous rooftop. It sounded perfect…

We got to San Marcos and checked in to our hostel, which was very nice, the room was ok, with shared bathrooms which were alright, but the main selling point was the rooftop terrace which had a great view of the lake, volcanoes, and a couple of huge avocado trees FULL of birds!

But when we walked down into the village of San Marcos we couldn’t understand the hype of this place. It was very touristy, and felt fake and forced. Plus the main street (which was very narrow) was literally an open sewer, so the town stunk! And to top it off, had a major fly problem (probably from the open sewer) and a stray dog problem (leading to lots of dog poo in the narrow streets). We tried to grab some lunch and had a look in a few of the restaurants, they were all open air, and not only were they all super expensive,  but they all had serious fly problems, and I don’t mean just a few, like literally hundreds of flies!!

We spoke about leaving the town and trying somewhere else as it was pretty disappointing all in all, but since our hostel (and the view) was so nice, we decided to persevere, and reminded ourselves that we could leave the town during the day whenever we wanted.

In the end, we managed to find a few nice places to eat up in the hills and away from the main street, “the hidden garden“, a breakfast place set in beautiful gardens, and “zen eats” which was a vegan place with good views and reasonable prices. Neither had any flies, and were far enough away from the sewers not to smell! We went to both every day!! Haha!

The first day we woke up at 5am to go up to the roof to watch the sunrise, it was so clear you could even see volcanoes Fuego and Acatenango, which are over near Antigua!! But the main ones here are Volcan San Pedro (on the right) Volcan Atitlan (in the middle), Volcano Toliman (on the left).

Then we headed down to Cerro Tzankujil, a park on the lakes edge with the cleanest water in the region where you can swim, and there’s also a big cliff jump which is 12 metres high!

We chilled on the cliff side and watched everyone jumping off into the clear waters. It was too high for me, but Dave managed to pluck up the courage to throw himself off it in the end!! It was so high it was hard to stay perfectly straight, and he hit the water (only a little bit) leaning back, which was still enough to give him a proper slap in the bum(!), he said it absolutely killed!! Haha!! Still, it was nowhere near the worse position we saw enter the waters, we think a lot of people hurt themselves but just pretended to be ok haha!

We stayed here pretty much all day, before heading back to catch the sunset on our roof terrace and check out the birds at dusk. We actually saw loads of new birds here, including lots of different coloured Tanagers, Orioles and flycatchers. Then we headed to Zen Garden for food.

The next day we decided to visit a couple of the nearby towns, and went first to San Juan, which is supposed to be the “arty” town, and it surely was, but it did feel a little forced for tourism. From the boat pier, the road climbed steeply up, and was painted with bright colours and adorned with decorations. It was completely lined with souvenir shops and artist galleries. In the main town, all the streets were painted, and the walls, with various murals depicting the history of the region, from Maya to modern day. Despite how touristy it was, we did like the town and walked around for a few hours enjoying the art work.

Then we headed to San Pedro, which is the “backpacker” town and apparently has more bars and nightlife. We did really like this town actually, and we came back on another day as well, it is touristy too, for sure, but it’s also a little bigger than the other towns we visited, so it kind of handles (dilutes) the tourism better, and has cute narrow streets and alleys, also with lots of murals and brightly painted shop fronts. However, this town is literally built on the slopes of San Pedro Volcano, so the view was not as good, as you can’t see the other 2 and you’re on the biggest so can’t see that either!

The next day we went to Panajachel, the biggest town on the lake, and known as the main “gateway” to the lake with good connections to Guatemala city and Antigua, it’s where most people stay when they visit the lake, it was the busiest, and for us the town which was the most lacking in culture and authenticity. We didn’t spend long here at all, just took advantage of the facilities (the ATM) and grabbed a vegan ice cream!

Then we headed to Santa Cruz, which we really liked, with it’s Camino (walk way) along the edge of the lake, we stopped here for lunch and enjoyed the flowers and views along the Camino, although we didn’t see any hummingbirds ☹️ (this Camino was supposed to be good for hummingbird sightings… And it was FULL of hummingbird attracting flowers, all reds and oranges, but yes, we didn’t see a single one!!). 😭

We headed back and enjoyed a thunderstorm on the roof terrace.

On the last day, we got a boat over to Santiago Atitlan, which was the main authentic town on the lake on the foothills of Atitlan Volcano. There were hardly any tourists here apart from a couple of elderly tour groups, it was much more of a local town.

We really liked this one, it was Saturday and clearly market day, and it was full of local women in traditional dress selling or shopping. It was a busy, bustling and beautiful market with fruit, veg and different beans and seeds etc.

But we’d come here to visit the nature reserve up on the side of Santiago volcano, Reserva Tepepul, which I’d read had a good nature walk with one of the best chances in all Guatemala of spotting Quetzals… 🤞🏻

So we enjoyed the market only briefly before negotiating to get a tuktuk up and back from the walk. In the end we paid Q200 for someone to take us up there, wait 2 hours, then bring us back. It was quite a long journey (at least uphill) in the tuktuk, so in the end it seemed like a reasonable price.

We arrived at a view point and there was no trail I could see, but we asked the locals, and our driver helped us find the trailhead…. Which seemed a little dodgy at first, just an unmarked path heading off into the cloud forest. The first 30 minutes all we saw were loggers, bringing back huge stacks of wood tied to their backs, and we weren’t sure if this was the right path, but then we met some other birders, a local and 2 other tourist groups with guides. One group had seen a quetzal, the other hadn’t. The group which had, pointed us in the right direction… And then…. We heard one!! They sound a bit like a dove, like a soft “coo” but quite distinctive, it was definitely a quetzal! We tried to pinpoint it’s location from the calls but it sounded too far away, and eventually it stopped…

We didn’t see it or hear from it again, but still, that’s one step closer than we’ve been so far!! Haha!! 🙃 I keep saying to Dave… All this will just make it even sweeter when we do see one! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

And fortunately, the walk was beautiful in it’s own right, in amongst the cloud forests, with the sound of birds all around you, including the eerie robotic noises of solitaires. Plus, it felt like a real adventure since we barely saw anyone else on the trail apart from the 2 other groups and it was completely unmarked!

On the way back we spotted a pair of crested guans, again, a new bird for us, they were MASSIVE!!! They look like big turkeys, with a red wattle, but they have a fancy crested hair do too and seem very competent in the tree tops (not like you’d imagine an actual turkey would be haha).

We went back to the town to enjoy the market a bit more too, before heading back to San Marcos for a final Zen Eats!

We ended up really liking lake Atitlan, but it was our hostel terrace and view of the 3 (and sometimes 6) volcanoes which saved it for us. Along with finding a couple of nice restaurants up in the hills, away from the sewer smells. Otherwise, I think the open sewer, flies and fakeness/forced hippy vibe of San Marcos would have made us move somewhere else. But where? Perhaps Santa Cruz we think, as it’s still on the north side of the lake, with great views, and the hummingbird Camino was beautiful, who knows perhaps early in the morning it is full of hummingbirds?? Yes I think if we came back, we’d try and base ourselves in Santa Cruz instead!

But having said that, the restaurants here, hidden garden and zen eats were the best we tried, and the waters around Cerro Tzankujil were also the cleanest we saw in all our boat trips… And the only bit which felt clean enough to swim in, so maybe San Marcos wasn’t such a bad decision all in all ☺️

Next stop, Antigua and to get up close and personal with some of these Volcanoes 😉