San Pedro's Hotel Peneleu Has Blue Sky
View From Hotel Peneleu
OK, usually we shun the hostel, however, over on Jaunted, Claire Duffett brought the Guatemala's Hotel Peneleu to our attention. When she told us it was "by far the strangest and most beautiful" place she stayed in Guatamela, we paid attention. But when she showed us her hotel view photos we invited her in to tell everybody her hotel story. You know we are always suckers for a good view. Enjoy.
San Pedro La Laguna, a rural village on the shore of Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan, feels a bit like Neverland, complete with a tree house-like refuge. Those living inside hide from pressures to conform — imagined and otherwise — and sink into a state of permanent indulgence.
Hotel Peneleu, built atop the foothills of Volcan San Pedro, houses long-term visitors in its stucco turquoise rooms. By requesting a guide from the hagglers who loiter near the town’s main dock, travelers can find the hidden hostel around the corner from a chicken coop, behind a coffee farm.
The character of Peneleu’s clientele matches the outlandish color of the hostel’s walls. A Japanese girl, dressed in a once-white Christening gown now the color of slate, greets newcomers as they bargain with the owner for a night's stay, usually about $2.50. The self-proclaimed gatekeeper strokes the broken wing of her pet baby bird and sizes up her new neighbors with a litany of questions: “Where are you from? How long are you here? Do you like my bird?”
Lonnie, who lives beside the communal porch, left his jobs as a medicinal marijuana grower and part-time truck driver to travel the world spreading the truth about the inside Sept. 11 job. Once the aliens returned him to the New Mexican desert in the late 1960s, he gave up acid and fled the conspiracy-riddled United States in search of like-minded skeptics. The expatriate citizenry of San Pedro suits him well.
The drug culture in the town lends the place a laid-back, no-judgments air to which Bohemians flock. Yet the beauty of the landscape and the humility of the inhabitants save San Pedro from the depravity to which most hedonistic towns sink. Many evangelical Christian families, mostly Tz'utujil-speaking Mayans, live on the outskirts of town. Phrases like Dios es Vida adorn the hoods of residents' trucks, while stickers on the bicycles leaning against the hostel’s shed advertise Rastafarianism.
Every morning, a crowd gathers to watch the sunrise over the lake. There, Lonnie announces that the Mayan name for Atitlan means "the place where the rainbow gets its colors”. The locals acknowledge his remark with a smile; the travelers nod furiously in agreement. For the first time, he makes sense.
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by ced138
