I would love to say that we were up bright and early to do an amazing tour of all the indigenous villages nestled cozily amongst the volcanoes of Lake Atitlan, but why lie! We took our sweet time because who could resist a gorgeous hotel with a view, a delicious breakfast and pool time for my son.

(Locals taking a few minutes to eat before returning to work) So we finally arrived to Panajachel piers closing in on Lunchtime.

Pana Piers, this is where the hustle and bustle of this area truly exists. Here is where you will get your ride over to any of the villages. Conveniently, we arrived right as one of the local boats left and the next one, as they told us, won't leave for another 1.5 hours. So we decided to splurge and hired a private boat. Now this was a farce in itself. Apparently, one man runs the show and his minions follow. We bargained a price of $90 for just a boat and driver, no tour. However, he will be with us all day and take us to four villages, chosen at the moment by this man on the ground.

After paying him, we were shown the boat. From the start we told the driver that we actually don't want to return here, since our hotel is a little bit off at a different area. Immediately he was against it all, and called the guy who took our money who was yessing us to death and said to do whatever we wanted to do. Next our driver had no idea we had him all day. When we took our time he wasn't too happy about the fact that we took so long. When we decided to change a village he charged us extra, which we were OK with because it turned out that he was probably getting paid a small fraction of what that other guy took from us.

 Marina has been living in Central America for over 7 years and her site Travel Experta is all about traveling in Central America. Marina loves to help people plan the perfect vacation to this amazing part of the world! You can sign up for her RSS feed and join the fun on her facebook fan page and follow her on Twitter at @MarinaVillatoro.