We just retuned from a 5-day 4-night trip to Antigua, Lake Atitlan and Sumpango. Overall it was an excellent vacation from boat projects and other work. A bonus was fantastic weather: blue skies, 75 degrees F, and not a drop of rain the entire time. The OCC group here organized the trip. With 1 travel day each way (Rio Dulce - Antigua - Rio Dulce) 3 days were scheduled for exploring and adventure. 23 cruisers went with a support staff of 2 bus drivers, a trip coordinator accompanied by her young daughter. Although not air-conditioned the bus itself was pretty comfortable. Same with the Antigua hotel. In the Antigua area, it's 10 degrees cooler than the Rio Dulce with much lower humidity so air-conditioning wasn't missed that much.

The first adventure day was the Lake Atitlan excursion. For a number of reasons it was a long long day. Everyone was to be on the bus by 8am. But as it seems to be on many group trips, there's always a one or two whose tardiness keeps everyone else waiting. We're off a quarter after. We travel literally 2 blocks and are stopped by Antigua traffic police. The bus apparently does not have the required permit. Discussions ensue. I'm sure money changed hands. 30-40 minutes later a permit is hung from the rearview mirror. We continue on. Awhile later we stop for fuel & a bio-break; 15-20 minutes, also not in the schedule. The traffic is terrible, making slow going in many places. Bottom line, we arrive Panajachel 4 hours later, 1 hour later than our Lake Atitlan tour of 4 Mayan villages was scheduled to begin. The trip coordinator apparently didn't call ahead to the Captain of our lake transport because he was enjoying lunch when we arrived. So we wait. And wait some more while he is located and encouraged to hurry along his lunch break. The trip across the lake to the Mayan village of Santiago, the largest and most important religious and cultural-wise, begins at nearly the sane time the schedule had for the end of the lake tour. The boat is slow, taking an hour to cross, so now it's an hour past scheduled tour end. (The schedule allotted 2 hours total for the tour, which is clearly unrealistic with such slow lake transport.) We arrive Santiago, and the tour guide is waiting to start our tour however some of the group revolt - it's past 1:30pm and they're hungry, in truth we're all hungry - we'll start the tour after we've eaten. The guide really does his best to divide us up among restaurants that are reasonably priced and can get a group fed quickly but he's hampered by the lack of a strong coordinator on our side. Corralling cats would be easier. We end up in a Mexican style food restaurant with 4 other couples and all order what can be made and served quickly. Most of others in the tour group, in their respective restaurants, do the same. However a handful of the group ignore the plea for a quick meal, keeping most of us waiting for more than 15 minutes to start the tour. It's getting late and we've not yet begun our first tour. Executive decisions get made with the tour guide. We'll get two tour stops only here then travel to San Juan, the artist's community for a quick stop. He agrees to the revised plan. Again hampered by slow-moving cats seeing objects that must be investigated (cruisers seeing all of the items for sale along the road and unable to stop themselves from browsing and shopping). Eventually we get in those two stops and back to the boat for the trip to San Juan. It will be dark soon. A few of the women start to get nervous, almost frantically so, about traveling back across the lake in the dark and then the long drive back to Antigua also in the dark. They advocate that we turn the boat around now, missing the 2nd Mayan village (not to mention the 3rd & 4th we're already skipping) however the majority are not that worried so we continue on with the understanding that the San Juan la Laguna stop will be 30 minutes only. Working in favor of the quick stop, the San Juan Port Captain doesn't want a visiting boat on the dock after dark. We're hustled into tuk-tuks and whisked to the one place I wanted to go, the women weaver's cooporative. The abbreviated demonstration was enough to educate everyone about the specialness of the items produced there. Almost everyone commented that it was an excellent stop. I quickly purchase what I planned and was pleased to see many others purchase items as well. Was it 30 minutes total? No. But the boat departs the dock prior to dark for the hour passage back to Panajachel. The return to Antigua was much faster than the trip out however it was nearly 10pm when we arrive back at the hotel. Jerry & I head directly to a nearby restaurant for a quick late dinner then retire for the night.

On the middle day, we took a 3+-hr guided walking trip around Antigua. The guide was fantastic so although we've been here before, we saw new sites, tiendas and learned new information. Plus got in some walking exercise, much appreciated after two days of back-to-back bus travel. It's also Halloween and the town is partying. Kids in costume tricker-treat in the afternoon, adults dressed up head for parties later in the day, and fireworks (or at least fire crackers) at night. The disco below the hotel, and street parties are alive & rocking until 2am.

The final adventure day was the Sumpango Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Kite Festival. And what a festival! Locals from surrounding villages arrive in overstuffed busses, cars and pickups. Tour buses arrive crammed with visitors. Thousands of people have come to celebrate Dia de los Muertos in Sumpango. Reportedly even the President of Guatemala, who arrived to town by helicopter and views the festival from an elevated platform. Vendors sell kites, food (incl. several whole pigs roasting over wood coals), beverages, sunglasses, hats, ice cream, flutes, trinkets of all kinds, and more. The cemetery is filled with locals bringing flowers to the graves of their loved ones, and flying kites overhead to deliver messages to the other world. The festival grounds, a stadium, and surrounding fields are filled with people, young & old, local & visitors, flying kites or at least attempting to fly them; there was little wind that morning. The festival is also a kite competition. Teams build and assemble their kites by hand. The champion of each category - 3 meter, 6 meter, 9 meter - is the one whose kite flies the longest. As you can imagine, these kites need some kind of wind to fly. Around 2pm the MC announces the competition will begin shortly with the 3 meter kites. The first kite is readied, but there is still not much of a breeze, although the cloudy sky has turned a bit darker. It must have be around 2:30 before there was a breeze long and strong enough to attempt flight. With each attempt - each team has two attempts to get their kite flying - the crowd oohs and ahhs. In the next hour, seven kits are attempted; three get off the ground but crash into the crowd (yes, for real, we were almost hit by the first one) four fly long enough and high enough to be contenders. They were still flying when we had to leave at 4pm to get to the bus. I understand the big kites don't start flying until 6pm; I wish we could have stayed to see them. The day was not without group drama including one person not making the return trip meeting time & place so a search party had to go out to locate him, but I'm going to focus on the positive. Attending this festival was on my Guatemala must do list and it did not disappoint. Back in Antigua for dinner, we happen upon one of their Dia de los Muertos traditions, a procession that included pallbearers carrying a very large coffin topped by a prone Christ. Everyone dressed in black, women with white lace scarves on their heads, just as if it was a real burial procession. Except for the portable generator powering loudspeakers playing music and the large spotlights shining on the coffin.

Yesterday was the travel-back day along with a visit to the Guatemala City Zoo. Nice zoo, worth a stop if it's convenient. More group drama, this time associated with the lunch stop. The scheduled and trip coordinator verbally confirmed lunch stop was 1pm at a Walmart food court however the drama queens didn't like this, they were concerned about traffic delays and getting back at the scheduled time of 6pm so after the rest of us started our zoo walks, they convinced the trip coordinator to change it to a lunch stop outside Guatemala City. But this didn't get communicated or even put up for a group vote so most of us got stuck eating in a local roadside spot with very limited menu choices. This, after someone asked when we were stopping for lunch as the 2pm hour approached. The drama queens, knowing the change, purchased their lunches at the zoo and ate them on the bus. As you can imagine, the rest of us were pretty unhappy and in the end I doubt we would have gotten back to Fontaras much later than the 8:30pm arrival had we kept the scheduled lunch stop.

Unrealistic trip schedule with associated snafus and group drama aside, we're very happy we went on this trip. More pictures will be uploaded to the photo gallery - 2017 Rio Dulce - when I have a decently fast internet connection.