I woke up about 545 this morning. Had a pretty good nights rest. I had my earphones on blasting white noise so I didn’t hear any of the dogs, chickens, and tuk tuks running around all night long. It helped a lot!

I woke up went outside to take pictures of the sunrise.  I noticed an unusual cloud formation over one of the volcanoes. I realized that it had been eruptIng! From the lake I could see Fuego, which is what I’ll be climbing next to on Acatenango. During that two hours plus that I watched it erupting  about every five minutes. Wow. Many times I could actually hear the boom is it shot off smoke. 

I was hoping to go to Casa de Juanita for breakfast as I did yesterday but it was closed. So I decided to go ahead and head over to San Pedro where I ate breakfast. 

Absolutely gorgeous location right on the lake edge of the lake. The lighting is just perfect. These mountains around this lake are absolutely stunning. Just incredible. It looks like movies I’ve seen that are shot in Hawaii. Like Jurassic Park.

I just had a lady come over to my table selling desserts. I got a small loaf of banana bread for a couple bucks. It looks absolutely delicious. Wow. So good. 

I had a nice walk around San Pedro. I decided to get some exercise and see a little bit more of the city. There was some good street art here. I’d read that there was. I was kind of interested in seeing that. I walked all the way to the other side of the city where the boat taxis go to Santiago where I’m headed for today. 

As is common in this area there’s about 15 people at least per boat. It’s sort of like in Kenya.  Just wait till the bus is full and then you go.   I’m not any big hurry.  I drank a Coke looked at the beautiful scenery. When it was full, I headed on over across the lake to the next stop.

There are a lot of Jewish people in this area particularly in San Pedro seems to me. I saw an orthodox Jew and his wife with three small kids. One of them looked to be maybe four. And that little four-year-old boy was running thirty yards ahead of the family down these little streets.  It was the craziest thing I’ve seen in a while. The mom and dad seemed like this was normal and not a big deal. Some of the Guatemalans were looking at this little kid, running down the road by himself just looking and just shaking their heads and I was feeling exact same way.  I mean I just don’t understand it. I guess they just super trust their little kid or something but it was just beyond me. Crazy. I held off from saying anything to family like “What the hell?!”

I got  to Santiago (San Diego) and walked around for about an hour and a half I guess. It’s quite a large city. I took a few pictures. Went over to the church sat in a little bit of the service. Checked that vibe out. It’s mostly old women. Wasn’t much to appeal to me honestly. I walked around and I only saw one other tourist the whole time. I can see why. Just seemed like a random city you could find anywhere. 

I went to San Juan and went straight to walk up the Mirador which is this 700 m altitude climb.   I went up and down it three times.  2000 feet altitude each time.I was really sweaty after that. It was good practice for Acatenango. I back to the docks about 4:30 PM. These public boats work on when they get full that’s when they leave but at this time of day it’s hard to make them get full. So we waited till 530 which is the last departure time and then they go home for the night. 

 I talked to a guy named Diego.  He went to the States to do a leadership conference for indigenous Mayan groups. They went to New York and Washington for five weeks of study. It was very interesting listening him talk about going to the States. Didn’t speak any  English but he said when he was doing classes they had headphones which translated what going on. It’s interesting to see guys like that who have international experience.

I just got back home to San Marcos. I stopped at a food vendor to get some fried onions and put them on some french fries. I enjoyed the last of my banana bread that I got this morning.

Good times!