I mentioned at the end of my last post a rather longer than normal interval between posts of late.  Several of you have brought this up to me, most notably my sister, who, bless her heart, always brings it up with a voice somewhat convinced that something dreadful has happened to me.  🙂  She loves me, no doubt.

Anyway, some friends have been down visiting, a friend from Cursillo, Monica, her adopted daughter Maria, and Monica’s friend Denise.  Maria was born in Guatemala and was making her first birth country visit.  So I’ve been spending a good portion of my time regaling them with useless/useful information while following their meanderings.  Part of their time here included a trip up to Lake Atitlan, which of course meant a return visit for me.  Thus the post title.

One of the things I didn’t specifically highlight in my first photos of the lake area was the fires.  Guatemala is at the height of the dry season, so fires are a problem.  And it will probably come as no shock that Guatemala doesn’t have a lot of fancy water dumping aircraft. (read that any water dumping aircraft)  The mountains around the lake, and throughout Guatemala, are very rugged and remote.  So there’s nothing to be done but let them burn.   A scan around the lake revealed more burn areas than were evident during my first visit.

One of the villages we visited was San Juan del Lago.  Many of the pictures in my first Lake Atitlan post were from San Pedro.  Only a short, over the hill, TukTuk ride separate the two.  But the differences in atmosphere between them are very noticeable.  San Pedro is loud and bustling, with a definite hippy vibe to it.  San Juan is, in Spanish, tranquilo.  You don’t have to speak Spanish to figure out what tranquilo means.  BTW, for you photogs that might be wondering why I didn’t shoot this building from the other angle so the sky was blue instead of appearing grey?  The other side of this very interesting looking hotel was just flat, plain, concrete block.

It isn’t evident from the photo, but these appear to be connected projects.  In the foreground they were working on a foundation right up by the street.  In the back of the property was this “tree house” looking structure.  No way to tell if the intent was someone’s home or future short term rental.  The lay of the land would give the “tree house” a spectacular view even from the ground floor.  Below is the church in San Juan.

These two guys were busy building some simple merchandise racks.  I wasn’t quick enough to take a picture, but later I saw one of them walking from booth to booth, on the main market street, trying to sell them.  He was carrying all of them in this ingenious interlocking stack.

The final four pictures were all from the same vantage point.  We stopped to have some lunch in a little restaurant toward the top of San Juan that had a spectacular vista view.

This photo gives a contrasting view of the beauty of the lake and housing of the poor.  And below is a close up of how the pieces of corrugated steel for roofing were placed to allow these trees to grow up through their house.  They are fruit trees of some type that appeared to be limes.

As I’m posting this it is early in the morning on Palm Sunday.  It’s the beginning of my final full week in Guatemala.  In the coming weeks another Easter Season will come to a close and I’ll be back in my apartment in St Paul waiting for the good biking weather to come.  Did I mention that I have a brand new bike sitting in my apartment that’s waiting for it’s first ride?  My previous bike was stolen.

This week the final and largest processions will occur, and unless something unforeseen and unusual happens, I’ll probably be closing this years travels with a few more procession images.

I am well and hope you all are too.  And I appreciate that you are out there.