We took a break from Antigua to go to Lake Atitlan for a few days. We’ve been to the lake before and we stayed in the main city there, Panajachel. This time we thought we’d stay in one of the smaller towns around the lake, San Marcos, and I’ll write more later.
We wanted to get the morning shuttle, so we could be there in plenty of time to get the lowdown from our host Carlos before he shipped out stateside for the American Thanksgiving. But alas, that was not meant to be. By the time 9:45am rolled around (we had booked a 9:00am shuttle) and we had someone phone in to the ticket office for us, the shuttle had left without us. Some excuse about not being able to find our departure stop. (It was at a hotel which was one of the regular shuttle stops, and they had no problem picking us up for the Sumpango trip).
So, we left our bags at the hotel and trudged back into town to have a ‘chat’ with the lady at the ticket office. She was very apologetic, returned our money, and said we could catch the 2:00pm shuttle. From the same place. Ok. We wandered a bit through some markets, grabbed a lunch at the nearby organic farm, and went back to wait for the transport. At 2:20pm we were not getting a good feeling. We asked the hotel concierge to help us out and she phoned the ticket office for us.
Well….seems they were going to just leave us again. The lady at the ticket office got a hold of the shuttle driver, told him to turn around and by about 3:15pm we finally managed to get on a now packed shuttle bound for San Marcos. It’s a slightly longer trip than Panajachel but all the tour companies say it’s about 3 hours. Don’t believe tour companies. It’s a lie. We would have been better off going to Panajachel and getting a water taxi to San Marcos.
The road into San Marcos is bad with many switchbacks and seems to take hours. The highway to get to the Lake Atitlan area is so congested through some of the towns that it also takes hours. And so, by 7:00pm we finally made it to the lake. So much for getting there in good time. The shuttle driver didn’t take us all the way though. He stopped in San Pablo, the town before San Marcos, and booted all the passengers off. He did arrange for all of us to get Tuk-Tuk’s (the local 3-wheeled taxis) at no extra charge and said adios. It’s pitch-black outside, it’s a Saturday, and the streets are chaos. What are you going do?
We get into a Tuk-Tuk. This particular Tuk-Tuk though seems to be having electrical issues. As in the lights don’t work. It’s one of those kind of days. Did I mention it was dark? So, we take a side trip to the driver’s house for some emergency backup automotive wiring. I was more hoping for the emergency backup Tuk-Tuk but that obviously wasn’t happening.
We finally got into San Marcos about 7:30 and fortunately our host Carlos was still waiting around. A 0.5km trudge up the hill and we were finally there!
Oh, and the no extra charge was a lie too.
