Lake Atitlán is a Guatemalan crater lake 340 metres deep with three volcanic cones along its southern shore, and there is no road around it because there is no flat ground to put one on. The walls of a collapsed supervolcano drop straight into the water, and the Maya villages hold the very edge. So the lake is the street. Small wooden boats called lanchas run shore to shore all day, from Panajachel across to San Marcos, San Juan, San Pedro and Santiago Atitlán, and you go when the boat fills. Every crossing puts the three cones at a different angle. Mornings are the good half of the day. The water lies mirror-still and Tz'utujil fishermen push out in slender wooden cayucos, standing up to cast by hand as the mist lifts off the surface. By early afternoon the wind they call Xocomil has raked the lake into whitecaps and the crossings turn wet enough to soak you.
In San Juan La Laguna the weaving cooperatives take you from plant to cloth, dyeing home-grown cotton with indigo and cochineal before it goes onto the backstrap looms. Santiago Atitlán, the largest village, keeps Maximón, a folk saint who is a Maya deity, a Catholic figure and a colonial trickster all at once. His wooden effigy lives in a different household every year, wrapped in silk scarves with a lit cigarette between his lips, and people bring him cigars and liquor. The one walk everybody does starts in the dark. The ridge above the western shore is called Rostro Maya, the Indian Nose, for the reclining face its skyline traces. From the top you get the whole caldera, the lake below and all three cones taking the first light. One landing is missing from the run. Seventeen metres down, divers have mapped Samabaj — the plazas, altars and platforms of a Maya town that stood on an island here until the water rose and covered it whole.