G. City to Amatitlan

Trip Start Apr 30, 2006

Trip End May 07, 2006

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Flag of Guatemala Amatitlan, Guatemala
Tuesday, May 2, 2006

Once we got back to Guatemala City, Jack decided we could drive down to Amatitlan and see as he had been there 30 years previous and remembered it as a pretty little town on the side of a lake. So, off we went. When we got there, immediately there was a traffic jam getting off the main road which runs from Guatemala City to Puerto San Jose. This should have been our first sign that all was not as it used to be. However, we persevered and within an hour, we were heading into the main square where it soon became clear that all was chaos. There was a fiesta in town, probably because of Labour Day and throngs of people, busses, scooters, motorcycles, and one small Mazda 3 from Canada were in a maze of ever-increasing lunacy.

We did get to watch the rides at the fair while stuck in traffic and it was interesting to see people being flung about on rides that, probably, were imported from the States after safety inspectors shut them down because of age. I was half expecting to see one of the cages on the Ferris Wheel or the Loop de Loop and Upside Down and Around Ride get flung off into space but all went swimmingly well.

We did make it in to the town proper where we found ourselves unable to find the lake. I hauled out the trusty, 10 years out of date Rough Guide and looked up the town. It said that the town used to be nice but the lake had long since been fouled by pollution and was no longer safe to swim in so the wealthy had long since moved on to healthier shores but the town was popular with day trippers from the city. We gave up trying to find it after that.

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