Lake Atitlan: The Most Beautiful Place to Get Giardia

This is Lake Atitlan; the most magical place in Guatemala. I spent five days here with MomentOm Collective, "a community for those who embrace the circus and yogic lifestyle and value meaningful human connection through travel." They had everything; meditation, yoga, aerials, poles, fire-spinners, cuddle-puddles, a cacao ceremony, a full moon party, and even a PUPPY!

It's hard to explain what exactly Momentom Collective is. It's a group of people who are into yoga, circus arts, flow arts, travel, photography and/or entrepreneurship. MC provides a retreat for people with any/all of those interests to work on their skills.  The founders are from Montreal and Sydney, thus many attendees were also from those two locations. I met so many fun, skilled, awesome folks. 

This is the yoga deck where we did meditation, yoga and community authentic relating.

This was my cabin. Well, this was the cabin I stayed in after I requested to be moved out of the first cabin I was in. My roomies and I weren't "a good fit."

This was the dining hall where we ate but it was also the common area where people hung out much of the time. As you can see, there is one aerial rig here. When I arrived, it already had a Lyra and a set of silks rigged, but I climbed the silks and rigged my hammock too. 

Showing this pic of the dining area brings me to the only real drawback of this location. Apparently, every spring, this town gets a parasite problem in the water, and every one gets a stomach parasite. This retreat center had filtered water, but people were still getting sick. So they started boiling the water.  Another person referred to what was going around as giardia, which I know a little about (well, a lot more now). Giardia is not a parasite, it's an amoeba. And if that's what everyone had, it's not just from water, it's also passed between people. So, with two open-air compost toilets shared by 30 people, an open air kitchen, a multitude of flies and dogs, I don't think there was any way for any of us to avoid getting the ick. It seems we all took a turn. More on that below.

This is the view of the yoga deck from near the dining area. You can see that there is another aerial rig with silks on it. When I arrived on Friday afternoon there was a silks class happening here and I joined in right away.

This is the den, down below the yoga deck. This is where we did pole, had movie night, and I got body work.

This is not my cabin, but I spent most of my time in that purple and white hammock on the lower deck. It was magical. 

These are the showers that I did not use. Ha! 

The inside of my cabin. Can you spot my spider friends? How about the ants that crawled on me and woke me up every morning?

We were at the Eagle's Nest retreat center. It sits on a mountainside up above the town of San Marcos. San Marcos is not a quiet town, by any means. Every morning at 7:30, a local church blasts children's songs about Jesus. At night, the karaoke bar and the churches compete with each other. Throughout the day AND the night, there is a near constant chorus of dogs and roosters to keep you company.  The town is rife with hippy-tourism, and a hundred tuc-tuc drivers who really want to take you for a ride. Both literally and figuratively.

The day I left, I had suspected I was coming down with this raunchy stomach ick. I had to go to the next town over (San Pablo) to catch the bus back to Xela. My tuc-tuc driver kindly informed me that I had missed the last bus by three hours. So, I had him drive me two more towns over; to San Pedro. I had decided that I would get a nice hotel room for the night, rest, and catch the 5:30am bus back to Xela  just in time for class at 8. After driving my tuc-tuc driver nuts by examining many, many hotel rooms that were just nasty, I had him leave me at a cafe so I could use WiFi and figure my shit out.  After proper googling, I discovered the only nice hotel rooms were in Panajachel, another town on the opposite side of the lake.  I walked down to the dock to get a boat. But it was 5:45 and the last boat left at 5:30. 😭 As I was walking away, a group of young men stopped me and said they were also trying to get to Panajachel, and if we gathered enough people, we could hire a private boat. This indeed flushed out and soon enough I was speeding across this gorgeous lake. Upon arriving to Pana, I immediately hit up a pharmacy for the cure for giardia. I checked into my cute, "fancy" (there's no such thing fancy in Guatemala) hotel, had a "plump and obese" chicken breast at an Uruguayan restaurant, took an AMAZING HOT shower, and was passed out by 9pm. I was successful in getting my 5:30 bus back to Xela, made it to class, all was well. UNTIL.....I started to itch. And then I started to burn up. And then I got chills. My face turned all red and shiny.  Ugh. Guess what the side effects of anti-giardia medicine are? Rash and fever. Spent the rest of the day in bed. The course of meds required for giardia is super short so that part is over, but my stomach still has many woes.  I'm not even going to try to look for typos rn. 😂