San Pedro

It has been an interesting few days here in San Pedro. Let me tell you...

Saturday night I went to a bar to watch the guys from Portland perform. Live music is always great. Around midnight, I headed to another bar with a friend and there were hundreds of cops all around the small town of San Pedro. Maybe not hundreds, but a lot. Apparently the cops go around to all bars about midnight to frisk people (lots of drug use here) and shut the bars down. So, we went to an after party instead...which wasnt much of an after party. The owners of the bar were so worried about us getting in trouble by the police that we were all taken into this small room in the back of the bar. There were about 30 of us and it turned out to be pretty fun. People were doing their thing (drinking and stuff) and there were people playing the guitar, drumming and singing, face painting and it was quite a show. I didnt make it to bed until...well, late.

Sunday was rough and the Portland boys were nice enough to let Alex (new friend from Canada) and I crash at their house. The only very difficult thing is that their toilet has no toilet seat...and when you have a very upset tummy, you get quite a leg workout while using a lidless toilet. Sorry if thats TMI. But, its the truth. Maybe they should invent traveling toilet seats?? Also, it rained harder yesterday than Ive ever seen rain. It lasted about 2 hours with a bit of thunder and lightning. Thank goodness I got to watch it from a covered yard.

Today I got myself a room at a hostel after mooching off the boys and making them sleep in tents in their yard, while I got to use their bed....and then I ventured over to Panajachel, I believe the biggest city around the lake. Its about a 30 minute boat ride across the lake. I wandered around for an hour before I could find what I was looking for...the artisians market where I bought myself a scarf. Its amazing how good of sales people the Guatemalans are. They will do anything to get you to buy their stuff, and you have to be good at bartering with them. Its actually pretty fun. After a bit of shopping by myself, I got back on the lancha (the boat) and waited for an hour for it to get some more people in order for it to head back to San Pedro. I witnessed a beautiful sunset on my ride back to San Pedro.

To be honest, I am pretty ready to head back to San Marcos. Its much smaller and the hostel I was at has such a great community...not to mention the full kitchen, sauna and private dock for swimming. San Pedro is more for shopping and partying. So, I made head back across the lake later this week. I also need to prepare myself to venture away from Lake Atitlan and see more of Guatemala. I will, soon. Well, thats all I got for now. Much love to everyone.