san marcos de los gringos.

so perhaps it should be san marcos de los hippies....

san marcos is a few hops around the lake. suzanne got the day off and we went with a couple of her friends from the hospital, tyler and jan (from palo alto), to san marcos with a stop in san pedro. san pedro is on the other side of volcano san pedro (the one i can see in my window). very similar to santiago with a steep hill to climb up on your way into town, except all the women wore different blouses. they wore the same traditional skirts, but with very different shirts. suzanne thought she wanted to buy one, but on closer inspection they were seriously shiny (eh) and seriously see-through (double eh). some of the women wore shirts under them, but most just wanted to let you see their bras I suppose. very odd to see old women's bras. though it took a bit of dissuading, i did convince suzanne that it wasn't the look for her. :)

after jan and suzanne got some fabulous jugo squozen (i'm an academic - i make up words) from 10 oranges while we stood there and then placed in a bag with a straw, we headed for san marcos. san marcos is new age/hippie central. we placed our feet on the dock and immediately signs informed us that we could be reborn in a water massage, talk to plants, meditate in silence for 3 months, in addition to doing more run of the mill new age things like yoga and tai-chi. according to tyler there was a fantastic pizza place that we headed straight for, alas someone else told us their pizzas were small and expensive and they weren't open for lunch. so we headed to a place that i can't even spell but began with two a's and included a variety of vowels and a couple z's. on an open air veranda in the middle of the jungle we ate granola, beet-orange juice, crepes with nutella and a fabulous pesto and tofu sandwich. the bread was seriously amazing, though we quickly learned that the pace in san marcos was even slow for guatemala...despacisimo.

note: it's amazing that so many of these supposedly earth/spirit/health conscious people smoke. eh. seriously, where is the disconnect?

after our fabulous lunch we changed and headed for the water. we hiked around the island to tyler’s favorite cliffs for jumping. the volcanic nature of lake causes the water to drop off very quickly, perfect for jumping for people who didn’t just have their knees replaced. i decided that photographer was my job for the day. we joined a dreadlock bearing guy and his friends playing with a toe-headed baby in the water, a few cowboy hat wearing frenchmen, and lamentably a naked guy that forced us to avert our eyes pretty consistently. (tyler hadn’t brought us to a nude beach, everyone else was adequately attired.) I must mention again just how beautiful the lake is, it is this amazing green turquoise color and it was a fabulous hot day of sunshine. Well for a half an hour. In just minutes it went from being amazingly sunny and hot to crazy rain and mud. (not unlike the crazy rain I’m hearing currently is I sit in my room and write.)

tyler and jan (son and mother) had a hotel room to stay the night and thankfully we could change and clean up a bit. We then headed down to a café that was close to the dock where Suzanne and I needed to catch a boat back. Since tyler knew san marcos he consistently led us, unfortunately this time included leading us into a ditch full of gushing rainwater. So much for being dry. It was fun until the path dropped a couple feet and there I was up to my knees in a fast current of rain water. I suppose it helped the chocolate with milk taste all the better--amazing chocolate without too much sugar, just how I like it. We sat and talked as we waited for our boat, yet the time for us to go down arrived and we didn’t move. Our boat arrived and we didn’t move. Our boat left and we didn’t move. We just couldn’t move. so by default we were stuck in san marcos for the night. Had we left we would have missed the most amazing pizza (proscuitto e funghi) I’ve had in a long time (valerie - I think maybe better than pizzeria 712 - at least comparable), blues at blind lemon’s, and a fabulous $5 a night room.