Semana Santa - San Marcos, Lake Atitlan

During Semana Santa (Holy Week), Sienna and I drove to Panajanchel to pick up a former co-worker from Mexico, Danna, and her daughter, Becky. We left around 6:30 am on Tuesday and arrived in Pana three hours later after a fairly nice, but foggy drive from the city. The highlight was when it started to rain up in the mountains and a man in a beat-up pickup truck had a wire attached to the only wiper on the truck to manually clear the windshield!

In Pana, the weather was sunny and gorgeous. Danna and Becky checked out of their hotel and we headed back up the mountain to the highway and on to San Marcos, a village just west of Pana on Lake Atitlan. It took a good hour to get there and it would have been much easier to reach via boat, but I wasn't sure how that'd work with Sienna and all her stuff.

San Marcos is known as a hangout for those interested in yoga and meditation - this I did not know until after we had booked our accommodation at Hotel Aaculaax, an eco-friendly hotel with various walls made of plastic bottles stuffed with garbage and encased in wire, then plaster. The decorations were very unique - the use of glass bottles as light covers and window decorations, as well as the paintings on the walls.

We headed over to Santiago, another small village on Lake Atitlan, on a small boat. It was Sienna's first boat trip and she loved it! Sienna ate very little during the trip, thankfully she drank her bottle, but only after force feeding her as she'd initially push it away - just too much to do and look at in this new place to waste time eating!

We walked around Santiago and shopped for three hours, but Sienna didn't mind one bit. She crashed out when we sat down for a moment to enjoy a limonada. She and I headed back to San Marcos and Danna and Becky went on to San Pedro to do some more walking and shopping around. I didn't want to push my luck, as Sienna had such a fantastic day up to that point.

On Friday morning, we left for Antigua after breakfast. The town was alive with alfombra (rug) makers and the procession guys in their purple robes were wandering around getting ready for the action yet to come around dinner time. The alfombras are made of dyed flowers seen in the photo below and are amazingly beautiful. It takes all day to make them, but after the processions walk over them, they're swiftly swept up.

After much detouring around, we were on our way up a mountain to find our accommodation at the Earth Lodge. It was the only place available when we booked about a month prior to Semana Santa - Antigua is such a hot spot, if you want a specific place, you should book months in advance.

We found the place at the top of a mountain and down a small, dirt road overlooking a deadly cliff. We parked and hiked 300 yards down a steep, dirt hill, got our Cabin #2 room key and walked up the steep steps to the cabin. Once inside, our private cabin with a "large balcony and lots of space for all your traveling gear" amounted to a room just large enough to fit a double and a single bed, nothing more! I couldn't imagine cramming all of us inside that a-frame cabin and waking up in the night with Sienna and having very little space to move in an effort to get her back to sleep. No gracias.

I decided it was a good time for us to head home, shower and relax a couple of days early. We lounged around on Saturday, did some shopping on Sunday (I was surprised all the stores were open on Easter Sunday!) and I'm hoping to head to the market and maybe get a massage tomorrow, as Reina is due back tonight. Then, it's back to school on Tuesday!

I took two videos yesterday of Sienna realizing she can scream and loving it! I was cracking up!