San Pedro

What a town! The whole town is set on a 14% grade or so. It is right below the San Pedro Volcano which towers over the landscape like a kindergarten teacher surrounded by children. Many hotels advertise themselves and offer accomadtions for well under 100 quezales per night - some impressively overlooking the lake and town. This town is truly unique for its breathtaking setting, combined with incredible pricing and intensely local culture in the mayan people.

View from our balcony in San Pedro at hotel Joyas Del Sol

Kai, from the ferry ride was excited to climb Volcano San Pedro, and the view can be incredible from the top so we decided to chance it an join him.  The admission is not cheap at 100 Quezales into the park hike, but it does include aa guide. We started at 5:30 thru town up the hill to the base of the Volcano, arriving at 6:15. The hike is challenging but you are constantly rewarded by trailside coffee plants to snack on, and unrype avacados to marvel at the size of. We heard a toucan enroute, but never saw him, though the guide claimed to be able to spot him.  At the top by 9am, we stayed for an hour but only had 5 minutes of partial cloudlessness for a view.  The hike down was maybe even more challenging as the trail is quite eroded and slick with hard packed steep dirt. Erin's legs were shaking almost the whole way down, and Rigel fell a number of times while wearing the poor gripping crocs he uses for everything. Back by 12:30, we took a tuk-tuk back to the market to enjoy a comedor. Finding none open, we returned to one very near our hotel. Good enough!

Top of Volcano San Pedro with a view of the top of Volcano Toleman.  Airplanes passing by were only slightly higher than us at 3019 m.

Eat your heart out, Tarzan. Vulcan San Pedro is covered in thick hanging vines

For days after our hike our legs were extremely soar.  Erin had trouble descending stairs of all heights, walking like an old lady, bracing every step with hand rails. Never the less, we decided to leave Lago de Atitlan to head south since we now had plans to meet family in Nicaragua in April. After our third night, we had to choose between the Panahachel bound ferry or to return to Santiago and then San Lucas. We were lead to believe that a ferry was available to take us from Santiago to San Lucas, and given that we did not want to ride yet still being soar from the climb and believing the ascent out of the lake area would be easier from San Lucas, we decided to return there. Bryan and Maggie arrived as we were preparing to leave so we said hi-bye and continued on. There was no ferry to San Lucas after all so we rode the 17 km up and downs to stay in San Lucas for the night.