Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

I honestly don’t know how to describe this place. It is the most magical place I’ve been to so far. It’s beauty transcends everything I’ve seen! If you ever find yourself in Guatemala, you should make it a point to visit Lake Atitlan and you MUST go for more than just a day.

Lake Atitlan is a volcanic crater lake located in the south western highlands of Guatemala. Besides the views, it’s known for its Mayan villages. Each town is so diverse and even has their own textile patterns which tells them apart from town to town.

There is so much to see and do here but in our short 2 day trip, all we wanted to do was sit and admire the beauty.

How to get there from Antigua:

Our hotel in Antigua offered transportation to the lake for just $11 per person!

I noticed that lots of hotels and travel agencies do that around town so it’s really easy to book tours and transportation.

Where we stayed:

I did A LOT of research before booking a stay at the lake. As a lover of AirBnb, I knew I wanted to use that rather than a hotel. After extensive research, I settled on this amazing house (Casa Byron) on the lake with the most breathtaking views located in Tzunana.

We got the place for $25 a night. Yup, you read that right, $25!!! It would have been $40 a night but I had an AirBnb coupon! Which you can get too if you don’t have an account already with them and use this link to sign up and book a stay.

Tzunana felt more remote than the other towns (It didn’t even have a market) but we absolutely loved it and would stay here again!

Transportation around the lake:

When we got to Panajachel, the main town at the lake, we needed to find a market so we could get some essentials for our two day stay.

We took a tuk tuk to get us to the market to pick up eggs, bread, milk, oil and avocados.

Make sure you pay no more than 5Qs to get around in the towns. On our first day, we made a mistake and paid 10Q and 20Q each! Later when we were going around we were being charged only 5Q and realized we got jipped, probably because we looked lost. lol…

To get to one town to the next, the best mode of transportation are the boats. From Panajachel to Tzunana it was about a 45 minute boat ride at 25Q per person.

As soon as I stepped on the boat, started the journey to Tzunana and saw the views outside, I was gone. I was completely lost in it’s beauty!

When we arrived at our port in Tzunana, all the tuk tuk drivers came out and started hassling us to take their ride. This was a bit stressful and so we ended up paying 20Qs here. We didn’t really know how far our AirBnb was going to be and it was starting to get dark so we just went with the first person who asked us.

What we did:

One of the things I’ve learned while traveling is that it is the best experience when the people you are traveling with enjoy similar things as you. When traveling, I prefer walking around to explore instead of taking transportation everywhere.

With my friend T, I was lucky because she loves walking as much as me. She also loves the lake as much as me and we both didn’t mind just sitting around at our AirBnb and admiring the view or walking up and down the hilly lake towns.

Tzunana: Our first morning, we woke up early to watch the sunrise while sipping on tea.

Then, we got ready and headed out to get breakfast.

You may be wondering why we went to get breakfast since we had already bought groceries for breakfast. Well, we learned very quickly that it’s better to eat breakfast and lunch out because at dinner time it gets dark and there isn’t much that is open late. The boats also stop running at dusk. So we ended up having eggs and toast for dinner the night we arrived and on our first morning we went up to Lomas de Tzununa-Lomas de Tzununá for breakfast by the recommendation of Byron, our AirBnb host.

It was a 15 minute uphill hike to the location and oh my God all the uphill was SO WORTH IT. The views were incredible, the sky was so clear and the weather was so perfect! #alhumdolillah

We ordered “Breakfast Typical” which consists of fried eggs, beans, plantains, fruit, cheese, a tomato sauce and tortillas. We also got guacamole, french fries, coffee and a fruit smoothie. (Another important aspect of traveling for me is food, gotta travel with people who enjoy food!)

We spent about two hours here. Probably could have stayed longer if we had more than one full day at the lake.

I mean with views like this, how could you not want to spend the whole day there?

The owner of this hotel came and greeted us and talked to us for a while. We asked him his recommendation on what to do for our day. He suggested we go to San Juan and San Pedro, and that is exactly what we ended up doing.

San Juan: Being one of the smaller villages, seems to be less touristy. As soon as we stepped off the boat, we saw the streets lined with shops full of beautiful handmade items.

The local women of the village use organic dyes to make colorful textiles. I even got a chance to witness a master at work!

We strolled through the street, going uphill and stopping at any shop that looked appealing. All of the shop owners were so nice and it was a lot of fun talking to them. Well, T did most of the talking. I could pick up the gist of the conversations. A lot of people were intrigued by our clothes and headscarves, so that was always a conversation starter.

The scenery with the town against the volcanoes and mountains is so pretty. Everywhere you look, it’s just breathtaking.

I was surprised to see that San Juan had so much art all around town. Walls everywhere were full of vibrant and colorful murals.

As we continued walking, we stumbled upon an herbal store called Association of Medicinal Plants Mayab. Both T and I bought organic things from here like coconut soap and lemongrass tea.

Our next stop was Casa Flor Ixcaco Weaving Cooperative. We were told that this is a great place to watch weaving and get good quality handmade goods. When we arrived, there wasn’t much going on but it was fine because we still enjoyed looking through all the goods which were similar to those we saw in the streets.

We started to get hungry around this time and began to head back towards the port where the shops and cafes were. The street food in the area looked so good but I had to hold myself back (to avoid getting sick) and settled on a touristy style cafe. I got a mozzarella and tomato panini which was delicious!

The only other town we had time to explore was San Pedro which we learned was better to go on a 5Q tuk tuk ride rather than the boat which would cost more.

San Pedro: It was a short 10 minute tuk tuk ride to San Pedro from San Juan which is known as backpacker town. This village was more lively with people and tourists. There were tons of hippies lined in the streets selling their handmade items.

While I wanted to buy everything, I refrained since I didn’t have enough space to carry everything back to Antigua the next day.

We walked up and down the streets and tried to find more food places to eat. Our dilemma was either to spend more time looking for a sport to dine at in town or go back to our AirBnb in Tzunana and enjoy our final evening there.

We decided to grab food to-go from Cafe Atitlan and be back on the boat by 3 p.m. so we could catch the last bit of daylight views from our balcony.

I am so glad we did because once again our boat ride back was breathtaking and the views from our balcony while eating dinner were indescribable.

The lake is enchanting in any weather, rain or shine and I could not get enough of it.

We came home, heated our food and sat on the balcony to enjoy our last night at the house.

The next morning, we had breakfast while the sun came up, enjoyed the last bit of views and left at 7 a.m. from our port in Tzunana to get to Panajachel by 8-8:30 a.m.