A Visit to Lago Atitlan

The first of our many wonderful visitors came since we have last posted! My parents spent 10 days with us and we took the opportunity to travel to Lake Atitlan. And it did not disappoint.

Lago Atitlan is the deepest lake in Central America with a depth of about 1120 feet. It’s actually a massive volcanic crater that erupted 84,000 years ago and sent ash from Florida to Peru. The lake is surrounded by Mayan villages and volcanos and is about 2-3 hours drive west of Antigua (more on the drive in a bit). The lake also was the site of terrible massacres during the Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) where Mayan people were targeted by US-backed government troops. More to come on that topic.

This was only our 2nd overnight trip outside of Antigua. When Brett picked up our rental car, which on paper had 7 seats, he discovered that there were actually only 5 seats. And there were 6 of us. No sweat though, Willa just sat on my lap for the trip. (She was very gracious and flexible about this as it wasn’t always very comfortable.) But otherwise, the trip went quite smoothly, save for some epic bad traffic due to road closure.

It was already dark by the time we turned off the main road to head down to the lake and from what we could see, the drop off at the edge of the road was massive, as the lights of Panajachel were WAY below us. The road into Panajachel was very steep and winding and somewhere way below us was the lake, but of course, we couldn’t yet see it.

We arrived our the house just outside of Santa Catarina Palopó and unloaded our stuff in the dark. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning to actually get to see the lake and our surroundings! And stunning it was!

The shallow part of the lake. It gets 1118 feet deeper.

#3 in the “Brett Sherman relaxing” series

Lastly, the house was literally on the side of a cliff. There was even a funicular to take us from the driveway to the house. And steps everywhere. The photos don’t capture how steep it was.