Ommmmm...

So this past week was spent on gorgeous Lake Atitlan, the part of the trip where we practice yoga every morning and meditate in the lotus position, looking out our third eye and chanting "ommmm" for hours on end in a huge wooden temple shaped like a pyramid, complete with incense, candles, and a guru with long black hair wearing flowly white robes. It's another world. Not your everyday experience and not for everyone, but it's one of my favorite parts of the trip. Balancing chakras, reading auras, lucid dreams, holistic medicine, and astral travel are all normal breakfast conversation around these parts. Welcome to San Marcos and The Piramides Meditation Centre. You have to see this place to believe it. In the past 20 years, this tiny little indigenous lakeside town as become a veritable hippie Mecca. People from all over the world have settled here to soak in the energy of this place and do spiritual exploration. They actually claim that San Marcos holds a unique energy and vibration due to energy meridians crossing at this very spot on the planet or something or other.

Who knows? But I do feel something special when I'm here. San Marcos is one of my favorite spots on earth. I started coming here on weekends every chance I could when I was a teacher in Antigua in 2003, usually by myself with nothing but a book and a single change of cloths, and with no other agenda than to soak in the energy of this place, read, eat great vegetarian food, and not talk to a soul, surrendering to my closet hermit inclinations.

Particularly interesting is that San Marcos is a random hippie Mecca against the backdrop of a intensely evangelical indigenous village. The two very distinct communities co-exist quite peacefully for the most part. However, the numerous churches around here have taken to broadcasting their daily services over loud-speakers that canvas the entire valley with competing congregations of a capella singers with excruciatingly poor pitch, piercing the otherwise exceedingly peaceful atmosphere several times a day. I guess a place can't be perfect.

I got to see my friend Nicola from England who was part of the fantastic group of people Nate and I met here on our first trip and have stayed in touch with since then. Nicola loves San Marcos so much she stuck around and now calls it home.

The Lovely Nicola

We absorbed a couple other members into our group this week, Nate's friend Tom and my old friend Neil who came to check out what all the fuss was about the Pyramids as well. Great having them along.

I ended up doing another show at this great venue in town, Blind Lemon's, a repeat gig from when we passed through here last October, lights, sound system and all, which is a rare thing around these parts. We packed the place out again and it goes down as another great memory. The owner of Blind Lemon's, Carlos Funk (whose "real" name is Charlie Smith or something mundane like that) pulled out his bass and accompanied me for a bit, very fun.

Doing my thing with Carlos

We even had a surprise guest appearance from Pieter and Chris at the show (courtesy of Nicola), our good buds from the last time we were here...in the form of a blown-up color photo taken at the last show.

Actual publicity for the show, funny.


The boys of the San Marcos dock, loading the lancha

A local fisherman on Lake Atitlan.

Now we've bid Guatemala farewell and just landed in Costa Rica. We head out tomorrow for a week working with endangered leatherback turtles, helping protect their eggs as they come up out of the ocean onto the beach to lay their eggs. Sounds pretty romantic, but in reality it means a lot of downtime in a really isolated place during the day and four hour shifts patrolling the beach back and forth, back and forth in the in middle of the night. Eh, not my most favorite part of the trip, but here we go. Then off to Nicaragua for a week of free travel!