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Around the other side of Volcán San Pedro is the village of SAN PEDRO LA LAGUNA , which has now usurped Panajachel as the pivotal centre of Guatemala's travelling "scene". It isn't Goa, but it does have a distinctively bohemian feel about it. Things certainly seem very mellow here but it hasn't always been so. Crack cocaine arrived in San Pedro in the early 1990s and the locals got so fed up with wasted gringos that they wrote to a national newspaper demanding that the freaks get out of town. Today things seem to have settled down again and, despite the obvious culture clash between locals (most of whom are evangelical) and travellers, everyone seems to get on reasonably well. San Pedro has also started to establish itself as a language school centre in recent years, the beautiful location drawing increasing numbers of students, though the quality of tutition is pretty variable at present.

Again, the setting is spectacular, with Volcán San Pedro rising to the east and a ridge of steep hills running behind the village. To the left of the main beach, as you look towards the lake, a line of huge white boulders juts out into the water - an ideal spot for an afternoon of swimming and sunbathing. Two sets of thermal pools , adjacent to each other halfway between the two docks, offer further opportunities to relax. The best of these, Thermal Waters (tel 206 9658; open late afternoon only; US$2.50 per person), also offers fine organic vegetarian food and camping.

There are two docks in San Pedro. All boats from Panajachel and villages on the north side of the lake, including Santa Cruz and San Marcos, arrive and depart from the Panajachel dock on the north side of town, while boats from Santiago Atitlán use a separate dock to the southeast, a ten-minute walk away. It's also easy to travel by bus to San Pedro from the Guatemala City's Zona 4 terminal: there are three daily buses between noon and 4pm; buses return from San Pedro plaza at 3am, 4am and 7am; the journey time is 3hr 15min.

Most of the village is based around the Catholic church in the centre of town, where you'll find the marketplace (busiest on Thurs and Sun), post office and, a block to the south, Banrural bank (Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm, Sat 9am-12.30pm), which will change travellers' cheques. There are very few phone lines in town, and consequently just one place, Solar Pools, between the docks, currently offering international call and email facilities - most visitors head into Panajachel, where there are much speedier and cheaper connections.

Volcán San Pedro , which towers above the village to a height of some 3020m, is largely coated with tropical forest and can be climbed in four to five hours. Most of the village guides are reliable - including Samuel Cumatz Batzin (tel 762 2487) who can often be found at Casa Elena - and it's well worth using their services, as the foliage is dense and the route can be tricky to find. Get an early start in order to see the views at their best and avoid the worst of the heat. If you'd rather do something a little more relaxing, Excursion Big Foot (tel 204 6267), just left of the Panajachel dock, rents out horses for US$2.50 an hour, bicycles for US$10 a day and canoes for US$2 for two hours.