Tropical storm who?

Apparently there is a tropical storm in my area but I haven´t seen head or tail of it so far (is that the right expression?). At any rate, tonight I am headed up to the ruins of Tikal in the north of Costa rica and then tomorrow night I will head into the centre of Guatemala so I don´t think I´ll see much more of it than some rainy nights if anything. The storm has also recently downgraded so if anyone was worried, never fear, I am headed to the safest area anyways.

Today I am exploring some villages around Lake Atitlan. When I arrived here yesterday in Panajachel, I got the brilliant idea to go to the same hotel as some people that I met on the shuttle bus coming here. It´s this amazing hotel accessible only on foot or by boat. Cool right? Well I waited for ever for the public boat to run, but the drivers were telling me that they had to wait until there were nine people and for an hour it was only me. So eventually I gave in and hired a private boat for about $15. I arrived at the dock of the hotel, which is built into the cliff and has an amazing view of the lake, and then the public boat pulled in right behind me. I was pretty choaked. Oh well, if that´s the only time I´m ripped off in Guatemala it won´t be so bad. The hotel was really nice and I had this little cabing all by itself with a great view although I had to walk 10 minutes to get to a bathroom. It felt really odd being in a place like that while I´m in Guatemala. I felt kind of phony being somewhere so luxurious. That feeling only increased after I visited the nearby village which has no roads, only walking paths and was filled with houses made of corrugated iron. Children and dogs, cats and chickens were everywhere and all asking for a quetzal ($). I only spent about 10 minutes there before heading back to the hotel. I had planned to find dinner in the town but that wasn´t really an option so I had dinner at the hotel. The hotel set up this great long table where all the guests ate together so I had a nice chat with an irish couple, a german seafarer (his word, not mine) and some obnoxious Americans who were bemoaning the fact that other people thought all Americans were obnoxious.

After a lovely sleep I headed back into Pana by boat at 6:30 and booked a bus ride to Tikal before hopping on a boat to a small village near the lake. I took a tour to see Santa Maximon, a Maya figure that the locals come to with prayers and to cure illness. They locals give Maximon money, liquor and cigars, as well as light candles in hopes of gaining his help. He is a bit of an evil saint although my guide was having none of that and insisted that he was only good and helping cure many physical deformations and illness. There were women there from a town very far away who had come to give a sacrifice to Maximon. They light a bunch of eggs on fire in a special Mayan ceremony which was neat to see although I felt really out of place in the dim smoky house where he was kept.

After that I visited the church (nothing compared to Antigua´s), the local market and a tiny, uninteresting weaving museum. Many Catholic churches here have figurines, similar to a nativity scene, dressed in real clothes and encased in glass cases. It seems a bit like paying tribute to mannequins but to each his own.

I then headed to another town around the lake where I am now, called San Pedro. San Pedro has a reputation for being very bohemian and there are a lot of tourists dressed in very flowy clothes here. I rented a kayak for an hour to tour around the lake for a bit and then headed here to check email.

I´m catching a bus to Tikal at 4:00 and will spend tomorrow exploring the ruins so I probably won´t be in touch. The following day I will be in a little down called Chisec to explore some great caves they have there. I´m off to catch my boat. Adios.