Today after catching up on sleep, we boarded a boat to go to Casa del mundo, a local hotel and restaurant nesting on the cliff next to the lake. There we lounged around for the morning, jumping in the cold water of the lake to go swimming and sipping lemonade on the balconies overlooking the lake and nearby dormant volcanoes.
After a delicious lunch overlooking the lake, we got back on the boat to go to our next stop, San Juan la laguna. As we exited the boat, we walked through the main street decorated with lots of beautiful Mayan decorations and murals. as we reached the top of the street we entered the tourism centre where we were introduced to the Mayan family that would be hosting us overnight. for us, the father called Luis came to pick us up and bought us to his house, unfortunately, though it was a bit far from the centre so we just dropped our stuff, before turning back.
our next stop was a tour of the city’s different cooperatives by our local tour guide. We first went to a textile manufacturing shop, where they explained to us how the local women spin cotton, dye the thread and make beautiful garments. They told us that the 35 women that work for this place generally work from home whilst they take care of their families. Our next stop was a chocolate manufacturing shop where they showed us how the chocolate is prepared to go from bean to chocolate bar, and we got to try every step of the chocolate-making process.
Next, we went to another cooperative which specialises in medicinal plants, they explained that a few years ago, there weren’t any doctors in the city. Which meant that most people would go buy these medicinal plants to fix their ailments. We were shown various plants and got to learn what each one was used for. following this stop, we went to a nearby painting gallery where we were explained the importance of corn in Mayan culture and the paintings that come from it. I found a beautiful painting there that I bought to bring home.
After the tour, we headed back to our host family where we were served a traditional dinner of chicken and rice by our host mom called Hilda. At dinner, we talked to them in Spanish to learn a little bit more about the history of the city and their Mayan lifestyle which was very interesting.
Our final activity for the day was to go see a local shaman, who made for us a Mayan ceremony we all participated in and learnt from about how these ceremonies would be used to help different people fix both problems in their lives but also in some cases health issues.