Another day, another place to visit at the lake. This time we moved on to Santa Cruz La Laguna, a 40 minute boat ride away from San Pedro La Laguna. (25Q/pp)
It's a much smaller village around Lake Atitlan, only around 3000 inhabitants and not directly at the lake. If you want to visit the center, you must go up the hill. You can choose to take a tuk-tuk or if you want to do healthy and fit: you walk! It takes a little effort, especially when you see everybody passing by in a tuk-tuk, but it's worth it.
Santa Cruz itself doesn't have so much to offer. But the little streets are intriguing. Everybody doing his normal thing. From weaving to carrying building blocks up the hill. You will see it all.
For lunch we stopped at CECAP. It's a non-profit organisation, and also has a restaurant (Sabor Cruceño) where local students learn to cook so they can have a better job. The meals we ate were really good! If you ever go there, I suggest the eggplant and tomato sandwich with mozzarella, to die for! It's not as budget as a almuerzo menu, but you support the locals with it.
You can easily take a boat to Panajachel (Pana for the entire country). It's one of the biggest towns around the lake and has around 15 000 inhabitants. It's probably the most touristic one and we didn't particularly liked it, but didn't disliked it as well. It's good if you want to do some shopping or if you need a bigger supermarket.
At the lake you must also visit San Marcos, probably the most pretty one out of all. The mostly Maya community occupies the higher ground, while expats and visitors cover a flat jungly patch toward the shoreline with paths snaking through banana, coffee and avocado trees. It's also a place where you can learn and practice meditation, holistic therapies, massage, reiki and other spiritually oriented activities. Not that we are spiritual, but the vibe is really nice there. If we would come back to the lake, we for sure would book something here.
Enjoy the sunset view that we had from our room!
BUDGET TIP!
If you're taking a boat from one town to another, always ask the price before you enter the boat. And you must know: you can negotiate! For example: normally they ask a foreigner 20Q to take the boat from Santa Cruz to San Marcos, and almost everybody pays it without further questions but we never paid that. We always paid 10Q or 15Q per person. You can find the normal prices below, but most of the time it's really difficult to get that price as a tourist. Try to stick to it, but if it's the last boat... take it!
Pana to/from Santa Cruz/Jaibalito – Q10 Pana to/from San Marcos/San Pablo/San Juan/San Pedro – Q25 Pana to/from Santiago Atitlan – Q25 San Marcos to/from Santa Cruz – Q10 San Pedro to/from Santiago – Q10 San Pedro to/from Santa Cruz – Q20 San Pedro to/from San Marcos – Q10
The exchange rate for that moment was €1 = Q8,7 or $1 = Q7,35
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