Nuestra Vida Nueva: Guatemala Part 2 - The City of Santiago Atitlán

Santiago Atitlán has about 50,000 residents and sits on the edge of the southern spur of Lago Atitlan.

The lake is straight west of Guatemala City in the department of Sololá.

The majority of residents are of Tz'utijil Mayan descendent and speak that language at home and in most social situations. Tourism is a fairly large industry as people mostly from North America and Europe visit the lake and all the surrounding communities. There is a street nicknamed Calle Gringa (Gringo Street) that runs up from the dock that has lots of tourist restaurants and tons of little shops selling various artisan crafts. Most of the items are woven and embroidered items including clothing. The women here wear elaborate shirts, usually with birds embroidered on the front and back, along with skirts and woven belts. Here's an example:

This picture appears to be taken on Calle Gringa (with the stores in the background), but I did not take it. People are wary of having their picture taken and usually ask for money so I just avoid doing so.

Another fairly common job outside of the tourist industry is agriculture with coffee, avocado, and vegetables being the most common crops grown locally.

One feature of Santiago Atitlán that is very foreign to me after living in Latin America for years is the number of gringos who live here. In the area where I live, there are probably 50 gringos within a 1/4 mile and there are stores in town that carry items that realistically only gringos would buy. Last night I went to dinner at a house nearby that a gringo turns into an Italian restaurant every Friday and Saturday night. I've been trying to avoid going but ran out of quality excuses last night. There were about 30 people there, maybe two Guatemalans and the rest American with a few Europeans tossed in. In all there were more gringos at the restaurant than all the gringos that lived in Tacna (which is 4 times larger than Santiago) when I lived there. For me it was a little surreal.

Here are a bunch of pictures of Santiago Atitlán:

This is part of the garden where I live. As you can see, it is quite different than Arizona.

These are pictures of the lake taken about 200 yards down from my house. The lake has risen over 10 feet in the past 5 years, which is why these trees are underwater. Historically, the lake rises and falls over the span of many years (some say that there is a 50 year cycle). Theories as to why it occurs mostly come from sources below the lake: either the springs that feed the lake from below increase in flow or volcanic activity below the lake pushes the floor up until the pressure is released and the level slowly falls again.

Native people build their homes up at least 50 feet from the lake because they know that its level will rise. Apparently, most of the homes built in the past 20-30 years closer to the lake were by foreigners who thought that the lake level would be static. There are many beautiful homes that are very close to being in real trouble if the lake keeps rising (hope to show some photos of that in a later blog post).

This a view across the little laguna towards the main part of town.

Here's a running/biking/mototaxi path behind the hospital.

Here's the road between the hospital and my house with town being a little further. As you can see there's not much room on the edge of the road making the walk a little more scary than one would like.