Lake Atitlán
Interesting facts
- The Los Chocoyos eruption hurled out up to 300 cubic kilometres of ash, which has been traced from Florida to Ecuador.
- The eruption takes its name from the chocoyo, a parakeet that likes to nest in the soft layer of ash it left behind.
- Volcanic activity here began about 11 million years ago, and the area has gone through four cycles of volcano growth and caldera collapse.
- The lake has no outlet to the sea: it is an endorheic basin fed by two nearby rivers.
- The 1976 Guatemala earthquake cracked the lake bed, and the water level fell by about two metres within a month.
- The black bass introduced in 1958 was suggested by Pan American World Airways as a way to attract sport anglers.
- Santiago Atitlán venerates Maximón, a folk saint whose effigy moves each year between the houses of members of a religious brotherhood.
- No road circles the lake; many communities are linked mainly by boat or by roads coming down from the mountains.
- San Pedro, the oldest of the three volcanoes, seems to have stopped erupting about 40,000 years ago, after which Tolimán began to grow.
Why it is worth it
Lake Atitlán fills the crater of a supervolcano. Some 79,500 years ago the Los Chocoyos eruption emptied a vast magma chamber beneath the Guatemalan highlands and the ground collapsed into a caldera; water has filled it since. The lake now lies at about 1,562 metres above sea level, covers some 130 square kilometres and plunges to around 340 metres, the deepest lake in Central America. Its name, from Nahuatl, is usually read as "between the waters".
What turns a deep lake into one of the famous views of the Americas is the skyline. Three volcanoes rise from its shores — San Pedro, the oldest, long inactive; Tolimán; and Atitlán, the youngest, formed within the last ten thousand years and last in eruption in 1853. Their cones stand one behind another above the water, and the light on them changes by the hour. Aldous Huxley compared it to Lake Como with "several immense volcanoes" added. Afternoons often bring the Xocomil, a wind whose Kaqchikel name is usually translated as "the wind that carried away sin"; it can whip the calm morning surface into steep waves.
Around the shore lie Maya towns of the Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel peoples — Santiago Atitlán, San Pedro La Laguna, Panajachel and a string of smaller villages, some of which, like Jaibalito, can be reached only by water. Coffee and avocado orchards climb the slopes above them, with fields of maize and onions. Beneath the surface lies Samabaj, a ceremonial site from at least the Preclassic period now some 17 metres under the lake. The lake's own history holds a warning, too: black bass introduced in 1958 wiped out much of the native fish life and helped drive the endemic Atitlán grebe to extinction.
Getting there
The lake is in Sololá Department; Santiago Atitlán is on its southern shore, and Panajachel on the north is the usual gateway, with boats linking the lakeside towns. The nearest airport is Retalhuleu (RER), about 57 km away, but most visitors arrive through Guatemala City's La Aurora International Airport (GUA), roughly 3 to 4 hours away by shuttle or private transfer.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Lake Atitlán is a large natural lake in the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre mountain range. The lake is located in the Sololá Department of southwestern Guatemala. With a maximum depth of 340 metres (1,120 ft), it is the deepest lake in Central America.
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14.70000, -91.20000per Wikidata