Taking another day-trip to outlying villages on the lake, we were amazed to see almost vertical farming plots and land-locked villages only accessible by water.
The people of San Juan speak Tz' utujil as well as Spanish and are proud of their traditional way of life, boasting cooperatives for weaving, painting, and coffee.
As we arrived, many cayucos were gathering lake grass to fertilize their coffee plantations. With limited time on this visit, a local helped to show us around.
The San Juan weaving cooperative is composed of 58 women.
Their work is featured for visitors by demonstrating the spinning of cotton into colored yarn by steeping it in various herbs.
Spinning is harder than it looks as I capsized the spindle & broke my yarn in less than a few seconds.
The woven patterns were beautiful and we were tempted to buy a few items here.
Art galleries line the streets of San Juan with colorful, bright, thick and partly pointillistic paintings covering the walls. Picture taking wasn't appropriate here, but artists here have unique characteristics to their work.
A typical perspective is a straight down shot from skyward, seeing only hat-tops as people. A few have a straight up shot like a worm's perspective, while others have a direct back shot of women weaving with their hair in long braids.
Typical San Juan scenery:
Harvesting fertilizer
Yarn colors
Steep streets
San Juan Locals:
Traditional Tz'utujil design
Kids ~ truly the same everywhere