The first village was San Antonio Palopo. It is the closest one to San Lucas and you can see it across the lake. Generally, its a hard village to get to from San Lucas because there is no good road between the two towns. On market day (Sunday), however, there is a public lancha that runs a few times a day, and you can catch a nice boat ride to get there directly. Like most of the smaller towns around the lake, San Antonio is built up the hill from the dock, with all the streets running at very steep angles upward. It's a very small village and much more traditional than San Lucas, with few visitors or tourists. The gente there still dress in traditional garb (blue stripped quipiles (shirts) and dark blue cortes (skirts)), and people are pretty surprised to see visitors. I was caught a little off guard when I realized that the fabric of my blue purse was actually the traditional print of San Antonio!
Up a precarious street from the dock stands San Antonio's claim to fame: an old church with an amazing view of the lake below. This is a central point of the town. All pickups going to/from Panajachel and the surrounding villages, as well as the people themselves, meet in this overlook. On the way to the church, we came across a ceramic factory--another unexpected surprise for me. It turns out that this is the second famous symbol of the town--all types of ceramics decorated with blue flower patterns of different shades. The shop, covered in these blue wares, mirrored the beautiful traditional dress of the people in San Antonio itself. Needless to say, I had to buy a sample!
After San Antonio, we hopped on a pick-up heading towards our next destination: Santa Catarina Palopo. This is a larger village a few kilometers away. Despite its bigger size, it is still off the tourist path and has retained most of its traditional charm. The people generally don't speak Spanish and dress in their traditional garb of blue decorated quipiles with blue headties. Luckily, I was able to snatch a picture of some women selling wares by the lake!
One sad thing about Santa Catarina is that here you can see the contamination of Lago Atitlan. Recently, there has been a lot of talk on the news about the growing problem of cyanobacteria in the lake. The contamination has gotten so bad that the government has now made it illegal to fish or swim in the lake, taking away many people's livelihood and method of bathing and washing their clothes. In San Lucas, you can't really see the change in the water, but in Santa Catarina it's obvious. Dark green waves of thick sludge coat all the water. The swampy smell makes it difficult to walk along the shore. It's really a sad thing to see.
After exploring Santa Catarina, we caught another pick-up to take us to Panajachel. This is the typical tourist destination of the lake--also jokingly called "Gringotenango"--and is filled with stores selling Guatemalan wares to tourists. This is my choice of shopping destinations around the lake, and since I had some presents to buy I decided to take advantage of passing through. By the time I had bargained my way to all my compras, the tree of us were starving! As a tourist heaven, Pana has a lot of good restaurants, and we weren't going to miss out. We finished our trip with a nice lunch in a small restaurant overlooking the lake. Angel and I feasted on fish and Yennifer (of course) had a hamburger. Full and tired, we finally made our slow path back to San Lucas.
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