Girl's Weekend in San Pedro

This year there was a whole bunch of 20 something teachers hired. (Most of whom were women.) So we decided to have a girl's weekend on Lake Atitlan in San Pedro. San Pedro is the "hippie" town on the lake, for reasons easily guessed.

We hired a shuttle to drive us to the dock in Panajachel (on the way, we stopped to look at the view). We then took the 45 minute boat ride across the lake. Our boat guy was a speed demon so it was a pretty exciting ride.

We stayed at a really cool hostel with a nice pool. We even managed to cram all 7 of us into one room. (poor Amy got the mattress on the floor.)

During the day we mainly ate delicious food, took naps, wandered around, shopped, hung out by the pool, and had drinks. At night, we went out on the town (and by that I mean that we went to the one bar in the town). I rained a bit each day, but it didn't cramp our style too much.

  

Fun stuff, fun stuff. Final shuttle back to Guate City not so fun as the roads curve A LOT and I was not properly recovered from the night before. Not to mention, I'd managed to leave my phone at the hostel, so that was a bummer and a half, but good weekend none the less!

Hike up Volcan Ipala

Eventually my summer festivities had to end and I flew back to Guatemala to get back to work!

A little bit after school started, a group of us planned a day trip to Ipala, a volcano a few hours from the City. This volcano is really cool because it has a crater lake at the top.

Our bus driver gave us a bit of a scare because he didn't seem to know exactly where he was going, but he figured it out. We had the bus park at the bottom of the volcano and began our hike. The path was clearly marked and there were other people going up and down. It was pretty steep and rocky, but definitely not as bad as some other volcanoes I've climbed in Guatemala.  Some of the path was lined with barbed wire on the sides, cause people live and farm on this volcano and were trying to keep their cows from wandering out and random tourists from wandering in.

It was probably an 1 1/2 or 2 hour climb. We were all breathing heavy and a bit red faced. The lake at the top is actually a park so we had to pay a small fee to get in. We then climbed up to the lookout platform, which was beautiful! It really gave you a good view of the whole lake!

We then headed back down to the lake edge to eat out lunch. We managed to secure a nice dock location and only had to shoo away a few dogs, some wading cows, a slightly scary bull and swarms of minnows to defend our spot.

After our lunch and some shallow wading with the minnows nibbling our toes, we hiked back down the volcano and headed back to the City!

Big ol' chicken bus hanging out in the parking lot at the bottom!