Lake Atitlan

After spending the night in Antigua, we took a minibus shuttle to Lake Atitlan. I'll put some Google Earth KML references here in a bit, but it's not too far away from Antigua. The entire lake, about 10 miles wide, is the caldera of an enormous volcano. Surrounding it you see several volcano cones that look just like you'd expect them to. Small cities ring the lake, connected mainly by boats that run from their piers. We stayed in a very small settlement named San Marcos for the first night. We had wanted to stay in (another) El Mirador, this time a honeymoon suite at the ritzy hotel Aculaxx.

El Mirador

Unfortunately, despite repeated phone calls and assurances, they had booked the room when we arrived. George called everyone in the area (all four or so options), and we got a much cheaper room at La Paz, a vegetarian hotel cum retreat run by a Guatemalan Buddhist cook.

La Paz

That evening at dinner we met Violeta and Carolina who worked at the Taiwanese embassy in Guate and also came to Atitlan for their vacation. George carried out a polyglot conversation with them and we ended up lending them our rain gear for their run back to Aculaxx through the sudden evening storm.
The next day we took boats to some of the other cities around the lake and snapped some pretty spectacular pictures. I also bought some chocolate candy flavored with cardimum. Despite its status as a Lake Atitlan specialty, I didn't find it particularly delicious. We entered the dominion of Maximon towards the end of the day. We rushed back across the lake and caught the last boat from the San Marcos pier that took us to our next hotel.
The pictures fail to do it justice (possibly because you can't capture the beauty of a hot shower on film), but the place was gorgous and served delicious vegitarian food. That night it rained again and you could look out at the lake and see the lights of the villiages around the coast. Every so often a brilliant bolt of lightning would light up the whole scene.
The next day (Wednesday) we took another shuttle boat back to the main city on the lake and then took a minibus shuttle back to Antigua.