Wedding- Guatemalan Style

I'm afraid that if I were to ever return to Guatemala, the bar has been set so extremely high that no future trips will ever live up to our initial inauguration into Guatemalan life.
Our main reason for coming to Guatemala was to help our good friends, Jake & Erin, celebrate their wedding. It took quite the trip to get here, though ours was not the most exciting of travel stories told among guests. We left Big Springs on Monday, drove 6 hours back to Berkeley. Had, what I can only call a layover, in our house, while we frantically packed for this trip that we've had planned for months. Our flight left SFO at 12.30am Tuesday morning, landed in Houston with a 6 hour layover (just enough time to fall asleep on the airport floor, eat breakfast, change money and reserve our shuttle that will take us to Atitlan (did I mention that we'd had this trip planned for months?). The flight into Guatemala City was just a few hours and our shuttle driver was waiting for us. Because the roads in Guatemala are not always the best maintained and the terrain is mountainous it took us almost 4.5 hours to get to Jake's families hotel, Posada de Santiago. Along the way we were stopped by the policia and after a few minutes of talking with our driver and a subtle change of money we were on our way again. Finally after essentially 32 hours of traveling we arrived at the Posada in time to eat the last of the rehearsal dinner BBQ and participate in the various toasting and roasting of the wedding couple. Of course, from everyone else's perspective they had given us up for lost as the driver sent from the hotel to pick us up never saw us. We of course had no idea that they were sending a driver…
Yesterday, was the most beautiful weather and after a quick stroll into town for lunch and a short siesta we were ready to celebrate the big event. The ceremony was beautiful with self written vows from the couple standing on a hill overlooking Lake Atitlan.

Following the ceremony was mingling with various folks from all over while eating delicious tamales. The highlight of this portion was the flaming volcano cake.

Yep that's right, a flaming volcano cake, which was cut with a machete. That's how they do it Guatemalan style.

The inspiration for the Flaming Volcano cake...

This was followed by the couple leaving in a decorated Tuk Tuk serenaded by firecrackers. A quick break and then into the Posada for a yummy candlelight dinner and toasts. After dinner we were shepherded down to the docks for a live music dance party on a boat. While the couple enjoyed their first dance, individual sparklers brightened the boat and fireworks were set off from shore. A few hours of drinking and dancing brought as back ashore where Chinese lanterns were lit and the drinking and dancing continued well into the early hours of the morning.
Needless to say, everyone was taking it very slow this morning and there has been talk of playing board games in the afternoon and tomorrow will begin the sightseeing adventures.

Lake Atitlan