A few days at Lake Atitlan should certainly be on your itinerary for a trip to Guatemala. We have put together a two week itinerary in Guatemala which includes a reasonable stint at Lake Atitlan (for more information on how to get around Guatemala in general, check out our blog Getting Around Guatemala which discusses several transport options for travellers to join up the main tourist hubs of Tikal, Antigua and Lake Atitlan.) One of the main things to do is to at Lake Atitlan is visit the delightful little towns dotted around the lake. There are many parts of the lake with no or poor road access, so the best way to hop from town to town is by boat.

Panajachel is the gateway to the lake and acts as the main transport hub. For that reason, many visitors decide to stay here, although we opted for the smaller, quainter towns of Santa Cruz and San Marcos. The boat service starts early in Panajachel at around 6.30am and there is a boat approximately every 20-30mins thereafter. We say approximately because the captains prefer to wait until the boat is full which can mean you sit on board for 20 minutes or so before departing. The service does end quite early in the evening, however, so it is worth checking when the last boat leaves the town you are in (e.g. the last boat from Panajachel leaves at 7.30pm but from San Pedro it is 5.00pm). The service consists of several identical motorboats, or lanchas, with basic wooden bench seats in an open ended cabin. You board from the back and climb over the benches and other passengers to get to a spare seat.

Depending on how far you are going, the price per trip varies from Q10 to Q25 and it goes without saying that they accept cash only. You will find that tourists generally pay twice as much as locals. We were told that this is normal as locals use these lanchas for their daily commute, so don’t worry, you’re not being ripped off! There are some small towns and even hotels which have docks off the usual water taxi route, the captain will normally deviate his course if you ask him to in advance – in return be prepared to pay an extra Q5. Try and pay either the exact fare or close to it, as you’ll be unlikely to get change from Q10.

From	To	Fare price
Panajachel	Santa Cruz	Q10
Panajachel	San Marcos	Q25
Panajachel	San Pedro	Q25
San Marcos	Santa Cruz	Q10
San Pedro	Santa Cruz	Q20
San Pedro	San Marcos	Q10

The mornings are generally much calmer here than the afternoons, when the lake tends to become quite choppy. This means the journeys are much quicker and more comfortable in the mornings. In the afternoons, some captains take the waves slowly which adds time on to the trip, whereas others prefer to launch their boats from one wave to the other, slapping it into the lake surface and sending spray flying.

One thing to watch out for on your first few trips across the lake, is to make sure to get a public lancha, rather than the more expensive private service. The public lanchas can be identified by the captain’s uniform which is always a white polo with orange trim and a ships wheel logo. It is always quite a clamour at the docks in Panajachel, as captains vie for customers by creating a sense of false urgency to pressure first-timers into making a split second decision to jump on their boat.  It can be quite an intimidating experience when you’re new to the area, but you do get used to it after a few journeys. When we arrived at the docks on our shuttle from Antigua, one of the captains even picked up our bag and loaded it on his boat in an attempt to guarantee our service and our money. Luckily we were wise to scams such as this and simply went and took our bag back, preferring to take stock of the situation, before being rushed onto one of the lanchas without knowing what was going on. We would recommend taking your time at the docks to make sure you feel comfortable before engaging with one of the captains.