We had the excitement of visiting Iximche - the last Mayan city built in 1470. Iximche was a Pre-Columbian Archeological site.
We spent about 1.5 hours here walking among the ruins. There were two ballcourts - a game that symbolized wealth and power in Mayan history and two temples as well as an administrative building.
At the far end of the site, there were at least 3 groups participating in a spiritual gathering - burning a fire and offering food and drink to the Mayan gods. Intermittently a pop or beer can would explode in the fire creating a popping noise.
Worshippers on this first Sunday after the equinox. This was a very busy day of celebration according to our guide Oscar.
After our informative stop we then drove for 15 minutes to eat lunch at a local restaurant called Restaurant Katok. We had all chosen our main course in advance (J and I both had chicken). We had freshly made tortillas using blue corn maize, guacamol (to be distinguished from guacamole that has a tomato added to it), rice and charred green onions with lovely fruit for dessert.
We continued driving the mountainous terrain ascending up to 8,000 feet then descending to 5,000 feet to Lake Atitlan.
One right mountain hair pin turn that required our bus to back up in order to navigate the turn as we descended!
Hotel Atitlan was formerly a coffee lodge and the owner has developed beautiful botanical gardens all around the property.
Lake Atitlan is a beautiful lake spanning 130 kilometres squared and is 340 metres deep. The lake formed over 90,000 years ago.
The view off the second floor. We enjoyed an hour soak in the hot tub with an infinity edge. We visited lots of friends from the tour and made some new friends too!!
Friends invited us to join them for a drink of wine before supper (which J happily enjoyed) and I delighted in the conversation! Dinner was so very tasty. We had to stay firmly rooted in our seats so we wouldn’t go back for seconds, but we did enjoy the homemade chocolate ice cream for dessert!!
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