Interesting comments earlier. I always understood that it was Aldous Huxley who described Atitlan as "too much". This was in "Beyond the Mexique Bay" (1934):- "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque, but Atitlan is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." Any evidence that O'Keeffe said it first would be of interest!!

The potential for the ecological destruction of the lake is worrying - I tend to regard many similar claims around the world as having an element of exaggeration by Green activists who seem unable to avoid "overegging the pudding" of their argument even when the basic argument has validity - let us hope that that is the case here too. But my own 2 visits to Atitlan in 1985 and 1995 certainly indicated a massive change brought about by tourism alone - Panajachel had become unrecognisable (and much less "pleasant") in just 10 years - I fear for what the subsequent 15 years have wrought. Has a surfaced road around the lake been constructed yet? That would certainly change the lakeside villages enormously. But what is to be done - the locals deserve a better standard of living and, by going, I too contributed to the destruction of what was there! The maxim "go there ASAP - it won't be as good in n years!" applies everywhere in the World I fear.