It was time to head out to Panajachel. I first went on a search for breakfast. I was looking at this one restaurants menu at the door when an American comes up and points me in the direction of some good breakfast. The Black Cat hostel is what it was called.

I sat down to have some breakfast and the guy who showed me the way came in and asked if I could watch his bag. I heard him speaking to one of the people there and he was headed to Panajachel and San Pedro as well. I ordered breakfast and watched his bag while he went to run some errands. I got French toast. Best breakfast I've had all year. I was done eating by the time American got back, Gabe was his name. He had only arrived in Guatemala and Central America thirty six hours ago. He partied hard the night before and everybody at the hostel knew him by name including a very attractive girl who owned the hostel.

Gabe is a huge guy, not fat, who's twenty six and is a Navy Seal but not before being in the Marines. Other than that I don't know, he couldn't talk about what he did.

I figured there would be a direct shuttle to Panajachel but nope, three stopovers. Good thing I found Gabe, or he found me, because I would have been hopelessly lost getting there via the Chicken buses. I don't remember too much of the ride or where the stopovers were but the chicken bus was definitely interesting. Pretty much all locals riding it. It was the first time Gabe had been on one and he certainly got a kick out of it. We just talked on the bus and became good friends. He had done a lot of traveling, over fifty countries or something absurd like that. Most of his traveling though was for his work so he says he really hasn't done many touristy things.

We didn't stay long in Panajachel, we just walked down to the shore where we got hassled by a couple boys trying to earn a commission by getting us to take a boat somewhere across the lake. Gabe was weary about taking advice from hustlers so he told to boys to leave us alone. We eventually found a nice boat to San Pedro which we shared with some other backpackers. The boat ride was quite long, like an hour or something, and I could feel the sun beating down on my arms and nose.

Upon arriving at the dock we were greeted with 'Cocaine? Smoke weed?' by a ten year old boy. Then again by a man older than fifty. We waved them off and went in search of a hostel or hotel. The hostel was booked so we took a fancy hotel with a hammock hanging out on the porch.

We each had a shower and went to get something to eat at a nice restaurant right on the lake. We each had a Moza (the best beer in Central America) and watched the sun sink beneith Lago Atitlan.

Later we had a walk around a bit and saw about three trillion hippies of all sorts selling hippy beads of all sorts and had a few beers in hippy bars.

In the night we hung out at Freedom, a local club just a few meters from our hotel. We met some Sweedish girls and danced with them but neither of us had any luck in the end. Gabe gave up the game early and went to sleep. I left an hour later without a clue which hotel room was ours. Shit. I banged on a few doors, got a few disgruntled responses by the room rentes and gave up to sleep on a hammock hanging out front of one of the rooms. I froze my ass off all night and Gabe had a laugh in the morning. I was 3 doors down. The next door I would have banged on that night was ours.