We're Back from the Lake

The whole family, plus my neighbor Pat for the first leg of the trip, went to Panahachel on Saturday. It was great to get out of Antigua for the first time in 4 weeks and we were full of high hopes for a great weekend. The video here shows the lake as we arrived and the views only got better the closer we got. Our problems started when my sister and mother both got a car sick. It was an incredible drive from my front row seat, these amazing green mountains that people actually farm on, but apparently they got out of the car when we arrived at our really beautiful Hotel Atitlan, feeling like crap. The kids swam at the hotel for the first part of the day and then someone in our group, they keep saying it was me, decided to go into town and find a boat that would take us to one of the little villages that surround the lake. The hotel offered to take us in a private boat for $75, but someone in our group, NOT me, said we should go into town and get a cheaper boat. We took 2 tuk tuks and arrived at the docks where a man immediately offered to take us in a private boat for 650 quetzals. We said no and he said, how much? and we said wait. We then walked down to the boats where another man approached us and said we would pay just as much for the public boats and since it was so late in the day we should take a private boat....I could go on because the discussion lasted a while, but we ended up paying the full price, which is almost unheard of here, of 650 quetzals to go to a desitination none of us had really put much thought into. Once we got to San Marcus, a destination picked by my sister because a friend told her to go there to see the organic farms and take a hike along the lake, we realized we had no idea where we were supposed to go or do. We walked up a charming hill to the top and found ourselves in a normal looking Guatemalan village. There we no farms or lake paths to be seen. We ended up walking to a really cute restaurant called the Blind Lemon. Our hopes were high for a little bite to eat, but what happend set the tone for the rest of the day. When I asked the waitress, who took about 15 minutes to get to us, if she could not put the guacamole or sour cream on top of his nachos, she stared at me with eyes full of hate and pretended to not understand what I'd just asked. This went on for about 3 minutes before an American man in the corner told her to put them in different dishes. She spat back at him that they didn't have enough dishes to do that and then continued to take our order with the surliest attitude I have come across since I quit waiting tables. We got our nachos after about 30 minutes and were hoping the rest of our food would arrive soon, but our hopes were dashed when my sister went to go find a fork and order another beer and saw our waitress talking with a friend in the kitchen as she just began rolling out the dough for what turned out to be the world's worst pizza. Needless to say, we started worrying about our return trip since we had spent the entire hour and 30 minutes we had alloted waiting for our food. The American owner, obviously not concerned that we were experiencing the worst service anyone of us had ever seen, seemed oblivious to us, despite the fact that we were the only table in the place. Anyway, the pizza finally came and we had to take it with us and I never got my cauliflower soup. We ran back to the boat hoping our captain was still there, he was, and jumped on looking forward to a little pizza as we motored across the most beautiful lake I have ever seen. The pizza tasted like soap and hate, so we gave it to the captain and then proceeded to laugh about our disaster the whole way back to the hotel. It felt like our visit to the lake was going to suck, and I felt bad for making everyone leave Antigua. We got back to the hotel and everyone went to their rooms and called it a day. It was a pretty sucky end to a pretty sucky day, even though the lake was incredible. More about the trip tomorrow.