Panajachel and San Pedro

Lunch and then Spanish lessons.

16.09.2007 - 29.09.2007 25 °C
View South America - out of Sorts on lidster's travel map.

Spent a night in Pana - as we locals call it - and it is nice enough. More of a staging post for the relentless procession of hippies and cheapskates which use it to take a boat from. Aldous Huxley once wrote that this is the most beautiful lake in the world. Not sure if he saw many lakes or was even considered an officianado of such things but for me he definitely knows his oats when it comes to mountain lakes. San Pedro itself used to be a coffee town but the prices crashed (not sure fair trade coffee has benefited any of these locals as yet) and they diversified into growing a multitude of different toxic and non-toxic plants. The former being the reason that most of the other tourists seem to be in San Pedro. Each evening I fall asleep to the sound of copious insect life, waves lapping against the lake shore and the low hum of giggling stoners cashing in a few quetzales at the gates of lucidity.

Below you may get an idea of what Mr Huxley was thinking:

Spanish lessons are fun. Have 2 local blokes as teachers who seem to delight in making dirty jokes in Spanish (of which I understand nothing) and drinking lots of coffee while ogling the female spanish students. Their understanding of things either preterite or imperfect far exceed mine however, which is as it should be.

The locals are the friendliest I have met so far. Although that may be explained by the relative remoteness of the location (or potentially the weed plantations over the back of the San Pedro volcano), I prefer to think they are just nice people round here. With most of the people stoned and me enjoing an easy life with a dictionary and some verb tables I think I will stay for a while.

Oh - and each morning I get woken up by this view from my balcony in the hostel.