Pictures from Guatemala Globase - Lake Atitlan

A couple years ago I did a brief consulting assignment through Indiana University, and I just found a ton of photos from that trip that I never shared on Goboogo. I am going to cycle through them over the next few weeks.  Guatemala is an incredible country, extremely worthy of a visit and a couple week stay.

One of the coolest parts of my trip to Guate was visiting Lake Atitlan. The lake is located in the Guatemalan highlands and is over a thousand feet deep. It is flanked by 3 volcanos and several Mayan villages.

The lake was once thought to be showcased an angling Guatemalan show piece, so they stocked it with all kinds of non endemic fish, like the Black Bass. Of course, terrible things happened. This little bird went extinct (Atitlan Grebe), and 2/3rds of the lakes endemic fish disappeard. Bummer.

Panajachel is a bigger village on the lake and has decent tourist infrastructure. It was also a popular hippie hangout in the 60's.

 The view from our hotel at night - the hotel was built to entertain foreign dignitaries back in the day and seemed similar to the forced "grand" hotels of old Yugoslavia or eastern Europe - a sort of aged socialist opulence that is both dated and interesting

 Some yakers

 This guy is going somewhere to do something 

 The volcano surrounding the lake make everything very dramatic

 A tuk tuk plows through a Mayan/tourist hybrid market 

 Climbing the steps

 A Guatemalan cowboy fella

 Just a gorgeous place 

I think that was an outhouse