Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
There's a Cajero 5B ATM just up from the Panajachel dock on the left. You can change
traveler's checks at
Banrural
(
8:30am-5pm Mon-Fri, 9am-1pm Sat)
in the town center, 1½ blocks
south of the market.
Zuyuva
( 11am-3pm Tue-Sat)
is a secondhand bookstore with a decent selection of fiction
and Guatemala titles. It's opposite Hotel San Francisco, 500m up from the Santiago dock
on the left.
Clínica Los Volcanes
( 7823-7656;
www.clinicalosvolcanes.com
)
is a private clinic providing med-
ical and dental services, with English-speaking staff.
ATITLÁN RISING
At San Juan La Laguna an art gallery is half submerged, its upper floor abandoned. At Tzunaná, only the roof is
visible of what used to be a shelter for waiting boat passengers. And in Panajachel the public beach has been
washed off the map. Makeshift docks have been erected in all the lakeside villages and in Santa Cruz, a rickety
plank walk has replaced the lakeside trail, now underwater. It may appear that a tsunami or some similar disaster
has struck. But what's actually happening is that the lake level is rising, inexorably - around 5m since 2009. In
the process, it keeps swallowing dwellings and businesses, most of them owned by outsiders. Foreign residents
are learning the hard way why it is that almost all local towns are built well above the lake shore. The lake's ca-
pricious behavior is well-lodged in the community's collective memory. The elders of Atitlán know of its cyclical
rise and fall, a phenomenon noted as far back as the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadors. The water level
has been considerably higher in the past and it will no doubt drop again. In the meantime, the rising trend is the
talk of the lake, with various theories proposed. Some attribute it to the deforestation of the lakeside slopes which
causes soil erosion. When Tropical Storm Agatha hit in 2010, it might have washed a great deal of this sediment
into the lake, clogging the crevices in its basin that provide natural drainage. A more authoritative theory attrib-
utes the phenomenon to the lake's volcanic origins. According to this view, seismic activity heats the ground be-
neath the lake bed and forms a sort of subterranean 'bladder' that keeps expanding until exit vents appear. This
periodic expansion causes the lake level to rise.
Getting There & Away
Passenger boats arrive and depart for Panajachel and Santiago Atitlán. Boats from San
Pedro to Santiago (Q20, 30 minutes) run hourly from 6am to 4pm. Boats from San Pedro
to Panajachel (Q25) run every half hour or so from 6am to 5pm. Some go direct; others
make stops at San Juan, San Marcos (Q10) and Jaibalito/Santa Cruz (Q20) en route.
San Pedro is connected by paved roads to Santiago Atitlán (although this stretch is
plagued by bandits) and to the Interamericana at Km 148 (about 20km west of Los En-
cuentros), the latter a hair-raising journey with spectacular lake vistas on the way up. A
paved branch of the San Pedro-Interamericana road runs along the northwest side of the
lake from Santa Clara to San Marcos La Laguna. Buses leave for Quetzaltenango (Q35,
