Antigua, Chichicastenango, Panajachel, Santiago.
We flew into Guatemala City and headed straight to Antigua from the airport. We spent a day walking around Antigua and looking at the colonial buildings. Antigua is a nice place but I get bored very quickly when staying in cities. Our next stop was the Sunday market in Chichicastenango; we spent the morning and early afternoon walking around the market and looking at the various stalls. It was interesting for a couple of hours and then I was again itching to go to Panajachel. We got to Panajachel that afternoon and went for the obligatory Lago de Atitlan viewpoint. Unfortunately, clouds had obscured the view (a recurring theme on this trip) and we didn't see the famous view on either of the days we spent on the lake. The next day, we took a short boat ride across the lake to Santiago, which was quite uneventful. In Santiago, we walked around for a couple of hours hunting for the shrine of Maximo and eventually found it in an obscure back street; someone later told us that there are three different such shrines. On the return boat ride, however, it started raining and everyone without umbrellas to shield themselves (good thing we brought them) from the horizontal rain got soaked. So far, the first three days of the trip was uneventful.
