The morning started off at Santa Anita with a minor emergency: one of our group had sustained a leg injury while playing soccer with the men and boys of the community, and needed to head into Antigua to get checked out. Our guide, Hugo, and Amanda headed off with him, and the rest of us piled into our minivans to head to Panajachel. Because it was New Years Eve, we were heading towards a day and a half of more vacation and less exertion. We bid farewell to our hosts from Santa Anita and set off.

As we drew closer to Panajachel, we had a chance to stop at an amazing vista overlooking Lago Atitlan (Lake Atitlan), which is where we were holding our New Years fiesta. The lake was stunning, with crystal clear water, and ringed by majestic volcanoes. After we arrived in Panajachel, we had about an hour to wander around, eat or avoid street food, shop in the market, and generally acclimate ourselves to a more touristy area. After being in Santa Anita it seemed a little strange to see people selling CDs of American music!

After grabbing food and a few souvenirs, we piled ourselves and what turned out to be quite a bit of luggage onto a boat to head to San Juan de la Laguna, the site of the Ecohotel Uxlabil. We had the ecohotel all to ourselves, and were excited to discover a hot tub and Mayan sauna (more on that later...). After settling into the hotel, we headed off to the La Voz Coffee Cooperative, where we had a chance to tour their grounds and sample, you guessed it, coffee. Everyone had different views, but a few people said that the coffee at La Voz was the best they'd had so far. We also got a chance to look through their guest book, where we saw the names of the GSB Guatemala trip participants from last year. Overall La Voz seemed to buy in to the marketing tactics promoted by ANACAFE, with lots of signage and some of their tour seeming geared towards a standard pitch. However, the cooperative seems to have been fairly successful, so perhaps that was the right decision for them.

By the time we headed back to the hotel, it had gotten dark, so we chose to ride back in the back of a pick-up, with 15 of us standing up Guatemalan style and hanging on to avoid flying out of the truck bed as we flew up and down the hills of the town. Showers and dinner awaited us, and soon after dinner the New Years festivities began. We had discovered an amazing 9-hour CD, courtesy of one of our drivers, Oliver, which had 30-45 seconds of many of the most popular songs of the last decade. Needless to say, there was a lot of dancing and merriment :) The evening was complete with legal (and scary) fireworks, and a visit down to the hot tub and sauna after midnight.