We were feeling weary of Guatemala and considered moving on to El Salvador, but we pressed on to the huge Lago de Atitlan, which sits in the highlands a couple hours west of Antigua. Its a very large ancient volcanic crater lake surrounded by three volcanoes and several Mayan villages. American hippies believe the Lake and its “mysteriously triangular volcanoes” are the site of a “spiritual energy vortex” and are somehow “linked” to several other famous places on earth. The energy vortex has psychic healing properties and so hippies have colonized the area since the sixties.
When the bus dropped us off in Panajachel I was immediately and firmly convinced of the existence of the energy vortex. I had an unshakable feeling that I’d been there before. Rather than being linked to the pyramids at Giza or the ruins at Macchu Picchu I’m sure that there’s a cosmic link between Panajachel, Phan Ngu Lao, and Thanon Khao Sahn. The rasta hats with dreadlocks sewn onto them, the impossibly banal T-shirts and the supernaturally terrible food can only spring from the same mystic source. I’m sure parts of Goa and Bali are just as scummy. Backpacker ghettos will steal your soul and make you hate the human race in an amazingly brief period of time. It is imperative that one spends as little time in their vicinity as possible.
So we got across the lake to the tiny village of Jailbolito and based ourselves amid the gardens of Volcano Lodge and terraces of Casa del Mundo. After running around Guatemala, lakeside time in hammocks reading and bird watching was very welcome. We paddled around on kayaks, swam and visited several of the little Mayan towns by taxi. We got caught out on the lake in the thunderstorms and watched the clouds bang short straight bolts into the lake while the thunder echoed back and forth off the volcanoes.

We took lots of pictures and and some video of us playing with spider monkeys and coatis.