San Pedro

 San Pedro is a little hippie town on beautiful Lake Atitlan. We’ve been taking it slow here, since both of us have been going pretty nonstop since before even leaving Santa Barbara, what with packing up our houses, visiting family, and preparing to leave the country. On our third day here, we arranged to go up to the top of a neighboring hill. The top of this hill resembles a 

face peering up into the sky, and we climbed up the nose. A guide came to meet us at 3 in the morning (ridiculously early!) And we took a bus to a neighboring town and then hiked for 40 minutes up the mountain in the dark. We had a beautiful view of the sunrise. The sky was filled with bright red and orange colors, and we were able to see all the lights of the neighboring 

cities around the lake. We spent a while up here enjoying the beautiful view of several mountains, a few volcanoes, and the lake. After this we went down into town and into the market place where we were the only tourists. I love admiring the appearance of the locals, especially the way they dress and how the ladies carry everything on their heads. The local ladies all wear the same outfits, with long skirts of the same fabric. We tried to stealthily take photos of the local people and the market place, because it was very apparent that they did not like cameras around.

 

Shoe Shine boys

These little shoe shine boys at the market came up to me and Nate and tried to talk us into buying their services. I was wearing flip flops and Nate was wearing white sneakers, so we weren’t really in need of any shining! We ended up giving them a few Quetzales to take their picture instead.

The next night was a celebration for saint Mary. Nate and I walked up to the town square to watch some fireworks. I was impressed at how long the firework show was, which lasted about an hour. They definitely don’t take the same precautions as back home though. They were setting the fireworks off relatively close to where we were, and strips of paper from the fireworks kept falling on us. After this show they were setting off loud fireworks in the street for a long time, which was a bit deafening. Finally, they brought out a statue of Saint Mary to carry through the streets. At this point Nate and I headed back home, but we could hear the fireworks going all night, it sounded like bombs going off. I was surprised at how much this little town celebrated.