Guatemala Travel Reviews 2022 | Lake Atitlan | Hiking | Cooking School

Fantastic Learning Experience with great hosts we have had many memories of the tours that we did with Jim while at Lake Atitlan. We recommend both of the tours that we did. I was in contact with Kara before our trip and she set up everything for the 2 tours. She did a wonderful job and kept me in the loop of everything that was going on. Jim was our partner for the 2 days of tours that we did and he was great.

The boat tour to San Juan, San Pedro, and Santiago was great. Jim showed us his various extended families in San Juan and how warm all of them were to him as well as how warm he was with them. You could tell that they all loved each other. He took us the organic coffee farm coop in San Juan and just his tour and how things were done were better than the tour we take in Antigua at Filadelphia. Our biggest memories were having lunch in San Pedro with Jim’s adopted family.

Fantastic Learning Experience
Henry and his great family were very inviting and we learned so much from this encounter. We also got to see Maximon in Santiago which meant that we saw parts of Santiago that most tourists would never ever see. He also took us to a hotel in Santiago that has great grounds but is so empty. What a shame. Has great views. We had a wonderful day with Jim and his extended family. The next day was our trail hike.

Now, this was great also, but for other reasons. Jim had us take the local transportation, which was: taking a local shuttle bus that was loaded with locals, taking a pickup truck with us in the bed with locals, tuk tuks (which we actually did on the boat tour), and chicken buses. Our starting point on the hike was Godinez and then followed the road for about 1/2 mile before following a trail down to Santa Caterina.

Fantastic Learning Experience
The views were spectacular. The hike was great. Ended up having lunch outside of Panajachel right on the beach where all of the locals go. Had a great barbecue lunch with one of Jim’s local contacts. From that, we ended up back in Pana, but then took the chicken bus to another town and then a tuk-tuk to Concepcion. What a clean city. This was great. Jim just kept taking us places that we would never have seen with any big tour group.

These 2 tours were memories that we will always remember and look forward to returning to Pana again and meeting up with Jim and Kara. Just wonderful people that care about the locals.
CANDD1 (March, 2022)