Most of the times Lake Atitlan is considered to be one of the prettiest lakes in the world.

It is surrounded by 12 volcanoes and a handful of pretty villages with each there own vibe. Because the position of the lake is quite high (1500 meters above sea level), the average temperature during the day will be between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius. At night it will be between 10 and 20 degrees Celsius. Another surplus about this is that there are not many mosquitos around.

View from the docks at Santa Cruz

The easiest way to get to Lake Atitlan is directly from Guatemala City. A shuttle will take you there in 4 and a half hour or so. When my girlfriend and I were there last summer, we came from Lanquín (from where you can visit Semuc Champey, but I will get back to that in another blog). Because Lanquín is pretty remote, it took our shuttle around 11 and a half hours to get to Panajachel, which is the biggest city around Lake Atitlan. In Guatemala it is not the distance of the trip, but the condition of the road that defines the length of the trip =) Anyway, once arrived we looked for a simple place to stay for the night (because we arrived too late to make use of the public transport boats and a private one asked way too much). So in the morning we walked up the docks and took a public boat to Santa Cruz, a village west of Panajachel. Santa Cruz is really small, there is not much going on there. But the main reason we went there is that I wanted to an altitude dive in the lake and a hostel called La Iguana Perdida runs the only dive shop at the lake.

La Iguana Perdida is a lovely hostel which offers various types of rooms In a garden like setting. They have restaurant with a great view of the lake and a lot of places to chill in a hammock. In the morning you can also attend a yoga class and let me tell you: it is probably one of the best spots to practice yoga, with the lake and the volcanoes in the background.

Time-lapse of the lake

The dive shop offers an altitude specialty course (PADI) because the lake is located at 1500 meters. The altitude results in a different atmosphere than at sea level. It’s a fun course that will teach you how to correct the recreational dive planner and the different types of depth meters. The courses takes one day and you will dive in the morning once and once again in the afternoon. The diving itself is not that exciting. Visibility is around 4 till 5 meters and there is not much life around, apart from some crabs and small fishes. Fun fact is that Lake Atitlan is one of the few lakes on earth where the temperature of the water is still around 21 degrees despite the fact that it is located at 1500 meters above sea level. This because the lake is kind of a collapse crater and hot (sometimes almost boiling) water rises from different ‘hot-spots” on the bottom of the lake. You can find these ‘hot-spots’ yourself by letting your hand slide trough the sand that covers the bottom of the lake whilst diving. As I mentioned before, there is not much to see and I considered the dives more like fun dives. Around the edges of the lakes you will find some flooded parts of hotels, like bars and balconies, where we fooled around a bit with bottles and rocks.

Some shots from diving

Not a bad view, right?

In the end we stayed way longer at Lake Atitlan than anticipated. Mainly because we met some really nice people during the altitude diving specialty course. So together we took a trip around lake Atitlan to visit other villages. First we took a public boat to San Marcos (mainly because we were warned about robberies if you roam around the lake in smaller groups). Although I did not see all the villages around the lake, I liked San Marcos the most. It is a hippie kind of village with a lot of color, it’s calm and pleasant and, as opposed to Santa Cruz, has a lot of places to drink and eat something. After San Marcos we took a tuktuk to San Pedro. On the way we passed through San Juan and later people told us that San Juan is a pretty dangerous village with a lot of criminality… Anyway nothing happened to us, so after arriving safely in San Pedro we walked around a bit. San Pedro is also known as the backpackers village. There are a lot of hostels, restaurants and parties and everything is a bit cheaper than in other villages around the lake.

Around San Pedro

In the afternoon we settled down for some beers and food and decided that we would take a private boat back to Santa Cruz. That turned out to be not such a good choice in end ;D When we decided to go back it was not even half-way through the evening, but there was no private boat to be seen. We asked around in restaurants and such, if they could arrange something for us. After a lot of phone calls and some bargaining (which resulted in almost nothing because the price seemed to be unnegotiable at that time) we had a deal. A guy from a tourist office took us with his flashlight through some tunnels that lead to some docks. After some old skool flashlight signals a boat emerged out of the dark with no lights on. We hopped on without questions being asked and with some irresponsible amount of speed (and still no lights) we flew over the lake back to Santa Cruz. Later at the hostel they told us that the private boats work from early in the morning throughout the day and that they are not really allowed to work in the evening/night because they need to rest. Anyway we had a lot of fun and payed way too much money for a single trip (however compared to the Netherlands it was still not such a big deal).

On our last day at Lake Atitlan we went to Panajachel in the morning. After some breakfast and coffee we watched a parade which seemed to be some kind of ‘end of the schoolyear’ parade with lots of people in gala/school uniforms. Thereafter we visited a National Park called Reserva Natural Atitlan This park offers some hikes leading to different spots, like a waterfall, a butterfly garden and of course to the lake. You can spot some monkeys as well. We walked around a bit and were most of the time by ourselves. It’s a fun place to spend your day.

Hope you enjoyed this blog about Lake Atitlan. If you would find yourself there one day I would recommend to dive there. It will not be one of your best dives, but it is just fun the learn about the effect of altitude on your dive and Lake Atitlan is a pretty special place. You can also get your Open Water there, but personally I would obtain that somewhere with a beautiful sea =) Also. we did not go up one of volcanoes, but we heard some good stories about the San Pedro volcano.

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Diving in Lake Atitlan Guatemala

Most of the times Lake Atitlan is considered to be one of the prettiest lakes in the world.