Guatemala- where school buses go to die

We are back in sunny St Cristobal after four nights in Guatemala. Note to self: plan remainder of trip to involve fewer buses. We started out in Xela and spent two nights there in a lovely hostel. Quetzaltenango is an ugly, boring city so we decided to go visit Lake Atitlan which we were told was about three hours away from Xela by Chicken Bus. Chicken buses are old school buses from the US painted and decked out to be used as public transportation in Guatemala (we saw one with leopard print seats and lots of sparkly chains, one with spider man painted on it...). There are about five-ten chicken buses leaving from any major city or tourist destination at any moment, none of them are ever full and they get there name because people often transport their chickens on them. It seems like an instance of too many people trying to make their living with these chicken buses so the supply far out-strips the demand. However, because they are all really old, they stink like diesel fuel and are loud, smelly and slow. We took a long string of these chicken buses to get to panachela, which, though only three hours away, can only be reached through treacherous, windy mountain roads. By the end of the bus ride, all three of us felt sick and thoroughly exhausted.
Panachela was lovely, if not completely overrun by tourists. Our hotel was about four blocks from the lake and there were tons of nice vegetarian restaurants. After our wasted day of travel, we spent a whole day riding a very slow boat around the lake visiting three different indiginous villages and admiring the view of the volcanos and mountains surrounding the lake. Yesterday was another day wasted on travel (its an 8 hour bus ride from lake atitlan to St Cris) - none of us managed to stay up past 7:30 we were so exhausted from our trip of too many buses, too much time spent in transit and really only two days to see anything in Guatemala. Lesson learned- stay in fewer places for longer amounts of time.