Guatemala, Day 5: hiking and more hiking

Today was a very active day indeed on Lake Atitlan!

After breakfast, Dave and I headed to the Reserva Natural Atitlan, a nature preserve where you can hike, see wildlife, and learn about preservation of Guatemala's natural resources.

Our first stop was the butterfly exhibit, which was truly awesome and probably worth the price of admission (70Q - around $10) alone. 

Butterfly house

There were tons of monarchs like above, but also a lot of more interesting and unique butterflies from Central America, many of which we had seen in Costa Rica, too, such as the Owl Eye Butterfly (below).

Owl Eye Butterflies munching on some rotting bananas

The reserve also boasts a cute and easy hike over to the beach, where we ran into some friends from our trip, as well as spots to view coatis (like Central American raccoons) and monkeys. The monkeys were the big show-offs, hanging from the trees like it ain't no thang.

We hiked up into a sort of canyon / ridge area, across which were laid quite a few suspension bridges, which were sort of terrifying at first but later were OK.

Dave wanted to zipline, but I thought it was kind of hokey and expensive. I wouldn't mind ziplining, but somewhere more remote and not in a nature preserve like some kind of roller coaster. Plus, didn't we get enough adrenaline from the bridges?!

Me on one of the bridges

After finishing up at the preserve, we caught a boat to Santa Cruz for lunch. This is a lake village that is only accessible by boat, and then you have a steep 15-minute climb to the village. I'm glad we visited but I'm also glad we didn't stay here, because that's a hike we'd have to do every day if we wanted to take a boat anywhere.

Santa Cruz La Laguna

My guidebook had highly recommended Café Sabor Cruceño, a traditional Guatemalan cooking school with amazing views (and amazing food!). 

View from lunch spot

The view should be amazing after that climb.

The other thing in Santa Cruz that we kind of wanted to do but didn't end up doing was scuba diving; the local scuba shop on the lake, ATI Divers, is located here, but they never responded to my email inquiries. I had also heard that the lake was rather cold, cloudy, and a possible bacteria risk. Still, it sounded cool because there are a lot of submerged buildings in the lake right now - the lake is somewhat natural, somewhat manmade, and the water level rises and falls wildly over the years, causing some buildings to become submerged and the boat lanchas to need to be moved. C'est la vie, maybe scuba on another trip.

From Santa Cruz, we found our hike - a winding, relatively easy path along the lake shore.

Hiking from Santa Cruz to Jaibalito

This was really the only true hike I did on the trip, and I was immensely pleased with it. Fabulous views, good length (about an hour), and when we were almost to the next village over, Jaibalito, we stopped for refreshing beer at Casa del Mundo, a fairly famous hotel on the lake only accessible by boat.

Best michelada ever at Casa del Mundo

The accommodations at Casa looked super cute, but there isn't a lot to do in Jaibalito and Santa Cruz is a fair hike, so I'd really only stay there if I wanted to relax a lot or wait a long time for boats throughout my trip.

We descended into Jaibalito and caught a boat back to Pana; it was the longest we waited for a boat the whole trip, I think, and it was only about 10 minutes. The boats really do catch you a lot throughout the day. (Careful though - we really stuck out in Jaibalito and some shady kids tried to sucker us for 25Q per person for a ride back to Pana. Yikes!)

We had dinner at Circus Bar in Pana, which boasted some really delicious Italian food, but I could have gone back to delicious Guajimbo's. The live music at Circus Bar is supposed to be good, but we were outside and didn't really hear it. 

Dave was about vacationed out at this point, so we went back to the hotel to try to read a bit and relax (for once). Last full day in Guatemala tomorrow.