Guatemala Part 11 — Lake Atitlán, Part 3: King of the Hill

Slow morning, the good kind. Enzo voted to sleep in with mom, so Xander, Axel, and I rented two paddleboards and went back out on the lake. Flat water, volcanoes out, nobody in a hurry.

The boys played paddleboard king of the hill, which has one rule: stay on the board. Xander was throwing his weight around and beating Axel round after round until I jumped in to help balance the scales. I will not be reporting who held the crown when we came in, but I will say the water felt great and I was in it a lot.

Pana keeps feeding us well — waffles and loaded breakfast bowls in the morning, shawarma salads and pasta by afternoon. And more murals everywhere; this town’s walls don’t quit.

Something I should’ve mentioned posts ago: our whole trip has coincided with the World Cup, and it’s been one of the best accidental features of traveling right now. Every restaurant and shop has a game on, so our heat-of-the-day breaks schedule themselves around kickoffs, and with travelers here from everywhere, half the fun is figuring out who’s cheering for who. Allegiances in our crew: Axel is all in on Messi and Argentina. Xander rides with Haaland and Norway. Enzo backs whichever team has the brighter uniforms, which is honestly a system. I was USA and Paraguay until they weren’t, and after watching how France played against Paraguay, I’m now proudly supporting Anyone But France.

Last night, walking back from dinner, we hit a closed street and a crowd: a beauty pageant parade, contestants in gowns and sashes waving their way down the middle of town. No idea what it was for. We watched the parade, then ended up at the lakefront stage afterward — twenty contestants lined up with two volcanoes behind them at sunset. Not a bad venue. Random but fun is basically this whole trip’s subtitle.

More Guatemala ahead.

#unpavedparenting