By the time we left Lake Atitlán we'd covered enough ground around it that it stopped feeling like one trip and started feeling like several. I've already written up each stop in detail, so consider this the map that ties them together, why the lake as a whole works, and which town does what.

It starts before sunrise, at the top of a pitch black, zigzagging trail with a guide, a bag of pastries, and twenty strangers sitting on benches waiting for the light to come up over the water. The Indian's Nose hike out of San Pedro is the one thing on this lake that's genuinely worth the 4am alarm, volcanoes and lit up villages emerging out of the dark as the sun rises. San Pedro itself is the backpacker anchor of the lake, cafes, Mayan coffee, colourful backstreets, and somehow also a horse ranch where I ended up riding solo through the forest with absolutely no idea why anyone trusted me with the horse. I've gone into both in more detail in the full 48 hours in San Pedro and the condensed shortlist, plus what a lancha actually is and why you can't avoid them.

A five minute boat ride away, San Juan La Laguna is a completely different register, a town where even the floors are painted, corn shows up in every mural, and a stingless Mayan bee sanctuary lets you taste your way through twelve different honeys until it's probably too much honey.

Then there's Santa Cruz, home to Free Cerveza, which might be the best hostel either of us has stayed in anywhere. Free beer on check-in, a tent instead of a room, family dinners with strangers who are friends by dessert, and a tiny scorpion in the tent next door on the way out. I wrote the full story of that one, cliff jump included, in its own post.

And finally San Marcos, the lake's hippy corner, dream catchers and cacao ceremonies down every alley, a genuinely hidden garden restaurant that took some finding, and Cerro Tzankujil, where the platforms range from brave to borderline reckless depending on who you ask about the height. We jumped off the tallest one anyway.

What makes Atitlán work as a whole trip rather than a single stop is exactly that contrast, sunrise hikes and horse rides in San Pedro, colour and craft in San Juan, chaos and community at Free Cerveza, and bohemian wandering in San Marcos, all within a short, occasionally rocky lancha ride of each other. Pick the town that matches your mood that day. The volcanoes look after the rest.