Beginning to discuss Guatemala Culture and Religion
excerpt taken from http://www.travel-island.com/interesting.places/guatemala.html
Solola
The road through Solola winds down to the beautiful, volcanic Lake Atitlán, much praised by Aldous Huxley, and is surrounded by purple highlands, olive-green mountains and three distinctive volcanoes - Tolimán, Atitlán and San Pedro. Although there are some small hotels around the edge of the lake, most visitors stay at Panajachel, the key tourist centre with a long strip of guesthouses, restaurants, bookshops, cafés and banks. Water-skiing, swimming and boating are all available on the lake, which is 19km (12 miles) in length and between 6.5 and 12km wide (4 and 7.5 miles). Around the lake are several villages, each of whose inhabitants wear differently coloured, densely embroidered clothes. Santiago Atitlán is the largest of these. Easter Week is famous for combining two traditions - the Catholic Easter procession and the rival procession conducted by the confradia (religious brotherhood). Their idol is Maximón - a black-suited figure with a moustache that combines physical characteristics and attributes of St Simon, Mam (a Mayan god), Alvarado (the Guatemalan conquistador) and Judas Iscariot. Inside the church, a little Maximón figure is carved into the altar, as is a scene showing the feast day of the confradia. Some of the women in Santiago still wear traditional headdresses that are made from long lengths of cloth wound repeatedly around the back of the head (a visual reference to Ixchel, the snake goddess of weaving). In San Antonio Palopó, the women weave on long rectangular backstrap looms. The men use the standing loom introduced by the Spanish and wear a type of wrap-around brown and white kilt. Both men and women in San Catarina Palopó wear shirts, huipiles (blouses), skirts and trousers embroidered with colourful geometric designs.
