Day 7 - Chichicastenango and Bambu

Early Thursday morning, we caught our van to Chichicastenango, where we found a place overlooking the market to eat breakfast before heading into the hubbub.

Sergio's first purchase obviously made this woman very happy! That little man is Maximon, a Mayan god, who loves cigars and booze. I told the store owner I had 5 quetzales left and what she had. She said, you can give it to Maximon! Ya right...

David quickly bought his accessories to look like a hippy tourist backpacker kid.

Although, the school girls around town thought he was Enrique Iglesias.

These girls were part of the entourage that followed us for hours around the market, lowering their prices drastically every few seconds. If you even glance at their wares, you can't escape EVER! These girls sold David a couple necklaces. But they were very tickled to get their picture taken with him.

Around 2pm we headed back to our van and headed back to Pana. The ride home was a little long due to the rather unorganized road construction. One lane was open so they were letting the uphill traffic go, then the downhill, and so on. But they didn't communicate and both uphill and downhill went and met themselves half way. This was compounded by the buses that don't obey any sort of traffics laws or etiquette, who went and got themselves stuck amidst it all. They finally just had the downhil traffic drive on the steaming fresh aspalt, which I'm sure is great for tires.

We got back to Pana just in time for Raquel to run out to meet us because we only had a couple minutes to pack up and jump on a boat to cross the lake. Raquel's son goes to school with several other children of hotel owners, so occasionally when the kids whose hotels are on other sides of the lake can't get home because of weather, etc, she gives them free rooms. Then, of course, their parents give her free rooms. So, we happily took advantage of this deal and went and stayed in Santiago Atitlan for one night at the Hotel El Bambu. A great place to stay. Highly recommend it. Peaceful, beautiful, friendly owner from Spain, delicious gambitas al ajillo...

This is right outside our bungalow.

This is our bungalow.
This is right next to the hotel.This is where we walked around the hotel grounds. David took refuge under a poor man's umbrella.We found a piece of New Mexico. The hotel has bungalows, this adobe building, two houses you can rent, a restaurant and lodge area. Many options!The boys went out to watch the local fishermen (fisherboys, some of them!) in their cayucos. That night, after dinner, they played chess.

Here you can see the town of Santiage Atitlan nested on the hill in front of two volcanoes. During the day, it looks like unpainted cement block buildings, and isn't picturesque, but this shot at dusk is gorgeous!