Happy New Year! I woke to the New Year in Panajachel with a plan to take a boat over to the city of Santiago and then try and find my friends in San Pedro, both little pueblos on the lake. On my way to the boat docks I stopped for a pastry and coffee in a little German bakery and was able to connect with my mother for a bit via imessage using the wifi there. For some reason I expected the boat dock to be a bit more organized but it was just like the chicken buses with trying to figure out the right one to get on and the workers yelling out where their boat was headed. The boat I got on to Panajachel was filled with Guatemalan tourists. It was a nice little journey to Santiago across the lake.
In Santiago I walked for a bit up the hill. I found the big church and market area. I was surprised to find the market still a bustling place despite the New Year's holiday but not overwhelmingly so like so many other market areas I have been to in other parts of Guatemala. It was also a very nice change to see so much beautiful traditional Mayan clothing including the men. It was a quiet relaxing little exploration for me and after an hour or two I headed back down to the port to find a boat to San Pedro.
This time my boat was filled with mostly American hippies, another culture that is pretty foreign to me. There had been some kind of hippie festival the night before and they were all headed back to San Pedro which was somewhat of a long-term hippie gathering place. Once in San Pedro my first order of business was to get some food in me. After walking all the way up the hill to the main part of town I took a wrong turn and went down a winding residential area. Eventually I found myself back at a Chinese restaurant that served me a heaping pile of relatively good chicken fried rice.
Second order of business was to find a place to obtain wifi so I could try once again to connect with my friends now that I was in the correct place. At a tiny little place where I ordered a strawberry shake I was able to get on wifi but there was no word from my friends. I decided to head toward where the buses took off and see if by some miracle the buses were still running on New Year's so I could just go back to Xela where I still had my room booked at the hostel. I was impressed with myself asking the lady at the little store where the Catholic Church was (where the tour book said the buses departed from) and was able to understand her directions all in Spanish.
At the church I found the mostly closed market and a dancing celebration with masks, but no buses. This celebration is by far the weirdest and best Guatemalan traditions I have seen thus far in my month of being here.
As I would be stuck in this city, my next order of business was to find myself some reasonable accommodation. The places I attempted, using my newly acquired Spanish, of course, were all completely full. I went back down toward the docks where I found the huge foreigner and hippie section of the city down by the shores of the lake. Here I miraculously ran into my friends who invited me to stay in their room with them for the night.
We hung out for a bit overlooking the lake on their terrace and then left to eat some tacos and go to a few different bars. However, it was a fairly quiet night, perhaps they all partied too much the night before. It was interesting to get a little taste of the culture of San Pedro and fine by me that everything was pretty chill.
In the morning we got lunch and then headed up to the church to catch a bus. The last chicken bus headed back to Xela had already left but we were easily able to take one headed toward Guatemala City and then transferred to another bus at the interstate. We were back in Xela by 5 pm and the rest of the evening was pretty chill, grabbing dinner and then spending the rest of the evening at the hostel.
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