taco's & toucan's travels ~ 2019

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DAY 47

Week 7

ANTIGUA GUATEMALA (Sacatepéquez, GTM) to PANAJACHEL (Sololá, GTM)

Tuesday April 30^th, 2019

TODAYS MILEAGE – 71 miles / 114 kilometres

TRIP MILEAGE – 19,736 miles / 31,762 kilometres

With the remnants of yesterday evenings hike still burning in our legs, I reckon quite a few of us were more than happy to have a 9:30 AM departure this morning for the lakeside town of Panjanchel.

The town of approximately 11,100 inhabitants is located on the shores of Lake Atitlán, a 3 hour and 110 kilometre (68 mile) minibus trip northwest of Antigua, in the Sololá Department.

Just in case you're curious, At an area of 130 square kilometres (50.2 sq miles) and 340 metres (1,120 feet) deep, Lake Atitlán is also the deepest lake in Central America.

After checking into our accommodations at Hotel Posada K'amol B'ey, we took a bit of an orientation walk through the town before settling on Deli Llama de Fuego for a pretty decent local lunch.

While all 5 girls breathed in deeply and "sardined" themselves into a Tuk-Tuk in order to go check out an adjacent national park, I spent the afternoon just exploring the town at my leisure.

Just after 7PM we walked down to the Mayan owned and operated Restaurante Jose Pingüinos for a traditional group dinner. As part of the meal, the owner – Jose, demonstrated the xylophone-type Mayan percussion instrument - the Marimba, how it was constructed and then had his two daughters and a male employee play for us during the meal. With the utmost of respect, the traditional music sounded a lot like a soundtrack that accompanied silent movies or Vaudeville acts of the time.

Jose also had his daughter Michelle demonstrate how a traditional 25 millimetre (1 inch) wide by up to 24 metre (79 foot) long cotton belt is worn as a wide brimmed hat, which in all honesty - was quite interesting.

Our evening walk home was punctuated by an evening downpour, which didn't do anything to dampen my spirits in the least.