Feliz Navidad, Feliz Año Nuevo!

It was a priority when planning this leg of our trip to spend Christmas and New Year’s with friends in an awesome place. One of the challenges of this travelling lifestyle is being away from friends and family for extended periods, especially during the holidays. We definitely chose well to hang out in Panajachel for the holidays--our little family of friends celebrated right! Our motley crew cooked up a feast of epic proportions for Christmas—complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, salads, and dessert. It is traditional in Guatemala to celebrate with a big dinner on Christmas Eve and at midnight the entire town blew up with fireworks from every street, corner, and house. Rok wasn’t impressed, but we definitely were. It wasn’t flyable on Christmas Day, so after a second helping of leftovers we headed to the next town along the lakeshore from Pana—some on foot, some with bicycle. We were treated to a very unique show in the town square of Santa Catarina—complete with a viking, Mickey Mouse, Einstein, a pig with a machine gun, and Pancho Villa all dancing around the square, surrounded by captivated locals, many of them in their traditional blue woven fabrics. We snacked on fresh fruit and eventually wandered down to the lakeshore in search of an elusive hot spring. We found it, although it’s currently a few feet under the surface of the lake. Some of us jumped in and took a little swim—hotcoldhotcoldhotcold.

New Year’s Eve was equally amazing—we went exploring across the lake via water taxi. It was really cool to get a new view of the volcanoes and see some of the smaller towns across the way. Our return to Pana was greeted by an amazing meal by Stefanie (ay, que rico!) and we headed down to the LZ to chalk up the van as the sun set. We were joined by many onlookers and treated to Christian’s amazing artistic talents.

As night fell, we headed up to higher ground and spent the night above town, camped out on takeoff. Our friend Mike and his wife delivered fresh tamales to us on launch, and we indulged in the traditional NYE snack, giving thanks for our last meal of 2013. It was a tranquil party—offering plenty of time for reflection.

At midnight every town surrounding the lake erupted in fireworks. For almost an hour, we were treated to one of the most amazing light shows I’ve ever experienced. The entire shore of the lake and every little town tucked away in the foothills was aglow with flaming gunpowder. We had the best seats in the house, watching the ring of fire from a distance, the clouds and volcanoes lit up and the bang bang, bang bang bang bang just distant enough to keep the dogs content.

We woke up to the first sunrise of 2014 with a perfect view—volcanoes, pink clouds, lake, vultures, and happy dogs. We chalked up the other side of the van with our morning Cade coffee, enjoyed the sun, relaxed, reflected, and finally descended back down to Pana in search of breakfast.

We are so thankful for the amazing company, amazing flying, and amazing experiences we’ve had in Pana. We are continuing on our journey with slightly heavy hearts and lots of happy memories. We’re already on the road to El Salvador, looking forward to new adventures as we continue the journey South. But we’ll be back for sure. We’ve definitely found a Guatemalan family of friends and a home away from home in this gorgeous spot.

We wish all of our friends and family around the world a very happy new year full of love, life and happiness. We think 2014 may just be the best year yet!

Stay tuned for another post with lots of flying eye candy… the video is currently in editing mode and we’ll have it up as soon as!

Happy New Year! from Cade Palmer on Vimeo.