PANAJACHEL, LAKE ATITLAN, GUATEMALA—I have never much cared for Panajachel, or “Pana†as it is called for simplicity and a cool, in-the-know factor. It is growing on me, however. For one thing it is far larger than I had thought and has tranquil areas removed from the swirl and dance of its downtown. Pana is the main transit point on the lake, the place at which one generally arrives. There are now overland routes arriving in other lakeside towns but one generally arrives in Pana. In the past I always made a beeline for the dock and a lancha for Santa Cruz. I only came back into Pana to go to the bank or to leave. And that, I felt, was the main attraction of Panajachel. From here one can leave as easily as jumping on a bus and there are buses leaving to all points every minute of the day.
 Every walk down the bustling and hustling streets involves solicitations for handicrafts from remarkably aggressive little girls, some glassy-eyed fellow or another whispering, “Joo wanna buy some weed, amigo?†as he passes, and a constant stuggle to avoid being ingloriously run down by jittery young men disappointed by the fact they drive a three-wheeled tuktuk taxi and not a Ferrari but still doing their best to imitate Mario Andretti.
 The bars and cafés are filled with partying backpackers who arrived on the bus and haven’t worked up the curiosity to get off their barstools and find out what is on the other side of the lake. Many have been on their stools for months and sometimes those months have turned into years. Some justify their existence with volunteerism, others just drink. They posses old and lined faces on 25-year-old frames, wasting away from cheap liquor and cheap drugs and cheap cynicism. They sit companionably next to old gringos who arrived 30 years earlier and never left. These hold on, propped up by remittances, a hand on the bar and another around a glass of rum. They mummify themselves with drink and cigarettes, killing the old traumas that brought them here and the fact that Pana is no longer the wide open paradise they once knew, still unwilling and now, perhaps, unable to escape the spell of the volcanoes and the blue lake which is mostly invisible nowin Pana due to development.
 But for all its faults, Panajachel has a certain restless and anarchic energy lacking in other, more tranquil spots. A local Mayan woman once told me a legend that within the lake lives a witch or siren who calls men to the lake. Her spell holds them here and slowly they find they have grown insane and cannot leave. I cannot speak to the existence of such a spirit but as a metaphor it is completely true.
 I came here once, intending to stay just long enough to complete my SCUBA certification and ended up staying three weeks, even then contemplating taking an offered job. When I finally tore myself away I felt a curious anxiety bordering on panic. I forced myself onto a boat and then a bus and the anxiety and regret at leaving utterly dissipated the moment my bus cleared the rim and we were beyond Solola.
 So, though my opinion of Panajachel has, for various reasons, become more favorable, it does posses that one great, all-redeeming virtue. From here one can leave on a moment’s notice. When you feel the witch isn’t looking you can grab your pack and hop a bus out. It might seem a small thing to take a boat or two before that but it is not. On the lake that small hassle assumes inordinate proportions. Here, in Panajachel, one is subject only to the land. But taking a boat means subjecting oneself to the lake whilst in the act of rejecting it.
 And so, before the witch cast her spell too firmly, I woke, packed, and caught a morning boat to Panajachel. I stepped onto the dock, into all the touts and touristas, grifters and noise, into an unlovely town, and immediately felt my spirits rise.
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