Lake Chicabál

This last Saturday, Ben and I headed to a sacred Mam-Mayan lake, Lake Chicabál. It is an old volcano that has filled with water. It is surrounded by a cloud forest in the rain forest. It is beautiful! The lake is closed for most of May so that the Mam-Mayan people may go there to worship and complete their traditional ceremonies. There are altars all around the lake and tons of flowers that people have brought and placed on the shore. There was a mysterious yet fascinating feeling at the lake. The rain season here has really picked up this last week so of course it rained while we were there but it didn´t stop us from having a great time! It was super foggy and everything looked really cool.
The worst part of the journey was the way home. We had to ride in the back of a pickup truck on a dirt road. Only problem was it was a VERY steep road on the ledge of a mountain and the road had turned to mud road from all of the rain. The driver was actually doing fine and going plenty slow but that didn´t stop the truck from sliding. That´s the closest I have ever come to having a heart attack.
The rest of the weekend we took pretty easy. Ben finds every excuse he can to ride the stupid motorbike. I need to take a picture for you all to see this thing. How it is still running is a miracle to me. We made dinner for the family yesterday-they loved it. The best thing about my weekend, by far, was getting to Skype with my nephew, Daniel. We are seeing and experiencing amazing things down here but nothing in the world is more valuable than family.

We saw this girl when our bus was stopped to pick people up. Can´t help but wonder if this is her food for the next month.

This is the start of our hike when there was still sun in the sky. It was so pretty!

This is the half way point when the clouds started heading our way.

Lots of water on the lens but this is us at the lookout over the lake. Uh, there is a big cloud there so we couldn´t see the lake, but it was cool. We took 700 stairs (not exaggerating!) down to the lake shore. Once we got there the fog was so thick that we could only see about 10 feet in front of us but we could still see enough to know it is beautiful!!