Antigua and Lago Atitlan

Let me start with something thats really unimportant but i wanna make a note of it. On the way to Guatemala I made use of the free internet access on kindle. Me and Vasek were going on the bus and thinking hard of how to say 'lathe' in Czech. But we could not think of the word. It was terrible. We would talk about something and after a while would come backto that topic. Over and over again. Whe we were most desperate I triumphantly draw my kindle from the bag and googled. Wikipedia answered the question: the word is 'soustruh'! ok I know this is not why you read this so back to the trip.
Like I said in the prevous post we arrived by a van from Guatemala City. The van dropped us at the Parque Central and we got accomodated in a cool hostel with a rooftop terrace with a view over the town and its three volcanoes. It was 40Q which is about $5 btw. The first day we climbed the cerro de la cruz hill from which there is a nice view over the town and particularly the Agua volcano. Unfortunately, the upper part of it was covered in a cloud. We have a bad luck in this.
The second day I woke up early to take some photographs at the sunrise. Then we just wandered around the town, visited the market, some church ruins and more. We found a different hostel to stay in because the water was not running in the first one.
The next day, Hana and Libor (our fellow students from CTU and Union) arrived. That was fun! Together we climbed the Pacaya volcano with a tour guide. The volcano itself was beautiful. Every volcano seems to offer something different. This one had a big lava field and leaking sulfid gasses which we havent seen before. The only incovenience was the guide who kept telling 'vamos' which means 'lets go' all the time and rushed, probably to take another group of people to the tour. Anyway, we took our time taking pictures and enjoying the views. We were always the last ones. In the afternoon we again visited Cerro de la Cruz and this time we were lucky to see the whole volcano. We showed Hana and Libor everything in the town that was worth seeing and the next day we left for the Lago Atitlan.
Eating was, of course, among the things we did. First day we had some streetfood at the market which was cheap and fine. When we asked a Dutch guy to take a photo of us, a homeless guy without teeth photobombed our photograph. Funny.
We also visited a restaurant where all of us ordered a regular main meal, except for Vasek who ordered sandwiches which were cheaper and yet the portion was much bigger. We decided to come back later and have the sandwiches for dinner. When we did so and made the order Libor had a bad feeling that the portion is going to be smaller. Libor always has a bad feeling or some kind of negative commentary.
He turned out to be right. First we were given different drinks from what we ordered. But that was just a misunderstanding. Second, they didnt have gas to make the french fries to go with the sandwich. Nevertheless, the waitress told us its was going to be ready in 15 minutes so we waited.
After 25 minutes we left for Burger King (yes, there is a burger king and mcdonalds in Antigua) and ate there.
I also finally got to meet some locals. I joined a group of local girls who were making some bracelets at Parque Central. One of them spoke English so we talked a bit in englis since my Spanish sucks. The reason why I met them was actually some guy from Holland who probably works with the kids there. I took some photographs of the girls and then printed some of them in a photography store. They were happy ;)
What I dont like much about Guatemala is that there are street vendors pretty much in every place we go and they do their best to make you buy their stuff or have your shoes polished and so on and so on. They even go to the restaurants and show you everything they offer even if you keep saying 'no, gracias'. The people who dont have anything in common with tourism seem to be the nicest. The tour operators and peope claiming to give you free information are the worst. They dont hesitate to lie to you about entrance costs and other facts just to make you take their offer. This was to be expected but it can get worse - you will see in the next post.