Just a short minivan trip west from Antigua and down into a massive caldera surrounded by volcanoes is the beautiful Lago Atitlán. All the towns around the lake are named after saints and my base for this stop is in San Pedro la Laguna, which is probably the most popular one with the most hotels, restaurants, etc. The lake is considerably bigger than it appears on the map!

My hotel is right on the shore of the lake and holy crap, did I hit the jackpot on my room! I got the big family room with the three giant windows over-looking the water and my own private balcony. Fantastic!

I don’t even have to leave my room to take pictures.

San Pedro la Laguna was named after the big looming volcano right next door, Volcán San Pedro. Thankfully, it’s inactive because it’s really RIGHT THERE!

I did leave my room, of course, to explore my new town. San Pedro, along with a few of the other towns around the lake, have a considerable amount of hotels, restaurants, and tour operators. I’m noticing also that San Pedro has a lot of cool street art to admire as well.

There’s not really a whole lot to “do” in town, except enjoy all the food and drink options and it’s a small place, but I enjoyed walking around looking at all the street art, visiting the central plaza with their small church, and making my way through the chaotic mercado.

As you can probably imagine, though, with a lake this beautiful there are a lot of view points around. I walked a lot of miles this first day. My first stop was way up the main road to the Mirador Plaza Maravilla. It turned out to not be the best view around, but that doesn’t mean it’s wasn’t good.

As I said, Lago Atitlán is surrounded by volcanoes and was created 85,000 years ago in what must have been a planet shaking eruption. So much debris was blown out that the ground collapsed, forming this giant bowl that eventually filled with water. Now that’s how you make a lake!

After Plaza Maravilla, I made my way over to the neighboring town, San Juan la Laguna to have a look around. It’s a smaller town with lots of shops and restaurants. It’s not entirely my thing, but it was fun to walk around and I got some delicious gelato over there. San Juan also had it’s share of street art, some of it on the actual street itself.

The main walking streets are called Calle de las Sombrillas (Umbrella Street) and Calle de los Sombreros (Hat Street). Someone got creative. Haha!

On the way back to San Pedro I got a great view of Rostro Maya, also known as Indian Nose, because it looks like a face in profile looking up toward the sky. I can see it, can you? I’ll be climbing that schnoz tomorrow.

Back in San Pedro I grabbed an early dinner and went straight to bed. I have an insanely early start tomorrow.

I had planned to do a lot more hiking while here. There’s a trail that goes right up to the top of Volcán San Pedro and I hear that the views are tremendous. I also heard it’s very likely that you’ll get mugged at the working end of a machete if you try it. It seems some people do go up there without issue, but a not so small percentage of those that do come back without their money, phones, and cameras. When I asked the owner of my hotel about the situation, his response was, “The odds are not zero.” LOL Ok, fair enough. He told me the only hike to do around here with a zero percent chance of getting robbed is the sunrise group hike up Rostro Maya. So, here I am at 4am (Dios mio!) on a guided group hike, NOT getting robbed by machete wielding banditos.

Supposedly, a lot of people get robbed on this hike too, but the banditos leave the sunrise group hike alone. Probably only because it’s run by a small army of local guides, but I’ll take what I can get. Once at the top, we drank hot chocolate and waited for the sun. In the pic below, at the very bottom is San Juan la Laguna, just beyond and to the left is San Pedro la Laguna, the town beyond that is Santiago la Laguna, the lake is of course on the far left, and there’s a six pack of volcanoes in back.

Finally, the sun made it’s appearance.

In the pic below I labeled the volcano six pack. You may remember the furthest one, Agua, the volcano that looms over Antigua. Acatenango and Fuego, the most active and temperamental in the area. And Tolimán, Atitlán, and San Pedro surround the lake. There are also two other volcanoes not too far away and behind me, Santa María and Santiaguito, but you can’t see them from this peak.

After the hike back down it was back to San Pedro where I was pretty much a zombie for the rest of the day. That 4am start is brutal at my age. Anyway, I didn’t get to do as much as I had planned here thanks to the bandito problem, but this was a really nice, if not quick stop on this Central American adventure. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way again… at 10am (gracias a Dios)! Stay tuned, kids…