Getting to Casa Del Mundo

Saturday we decided that we all deserved a rest after the two hard weeks of manual labor for Constru Casa, so we booked two nights at Ben's favorite hotel on Lake Atitlan. We went looking for a travel agency to get us there, and found one that said it had a really nice Pullman bus that would take us, was really cheap, nonstop, and everybody got their own seat. We had to leave at 7 o'clock a.m. on Sunday morning, which wasn't exactly resting, because we ate breakfast at 6 o'clock a.m. across town, but it was better than nothing.

We all arrived a little later than we would have liked, and inhaled our breakfast. Then, at the appropriate time, we went out to see if the bus had arrived. A chicken bus was standing in front of the agency, and we started to have a bad feeling when a man with only one eye came up to us and tried to make us pay more money to go on the chicken bus. We refused, but it was still the only bus in sight, so we had to get on. It turned out it really was a chicken bus on it's normal route, meaning it stopped for anybody standing along the road, and there were three or more people to a seat. Larissa and I made the mistake of choosing to sit in front, and so we got smooshed by someone almost the entire trip.

We we got to Panajachel which is were the boat taxis leave from to take you out to the hotels and various pueblos around the lake, we found a really cute little restaurant and got refreshed by delicious smoothies. (Which I have been craving this whole trip. But I have yet to find a smoothie that is up to Jamba juice standards.) The mom, Riss and I walked around the market streets and shopped around. We all found something we really liked, and then we had a yummy lunch at the same restaurant.After lunch, we asked somebody where the public boat dock was, because we didn't want to do a private boat, which was typically at least twice as much. He said of course he could show us the dock, but when we got there it turned out to be a private boat and he was asking Q.250 for a one-way ride. We negotiated it down, and even managed to pick up a whole crowd of onlookers before the man agreed we could pay Q.150 for all four of us. It's not completely unreasonable, but it's definitely not a good price either.

I was a little scared that the boat was just going to completely snap and break on us, because we were going over waves and it was definitely not a new boat. You could feel it shudder every time it came back down onto the water. Despite all the problems, we eventually arrived at Casa Del Mundo, our hotel, and were completely impressed and happy. Of course to get to the office we had to climb up an accountable amount of steep steps.