The main road runs along the lake, and there is even ferry service across the lake in various points, especially here, where the municipality of Macanal is cut in two by the lake.
We also went to Santa Maria, a town just below the lake that I've talked about before in my blog. It's not old; the town was constructed by and for workers on the dam, maybe in the 1960s or 70s. The setting is amazing, set in the tropical forest at the foot of high mountains. Can you imagine seeing this as you looked out the window of your grammar school?
Santa Maria is also an environmental innovator. It has a really progressive recycling program. People separate all household waste into different buckets, and each day's garbage pickup is only for a given waste type. If you put out poorly-sorted garbage, they simply don't pick it up! They have a big worm composting operation in the town, and the recyclable and non-recyclable waste is compressed into cubes and sold to processors in Bogota once a year, as I understand. In Santa Maria they're even experimenting with green roofs, without any pushing from high-tech firms or green nonprofits:
Look at the size of that squash! I'm surprised the roof's not caving in.
On the main plaza of Santa Maria, there is a couple that serves excellent arepas (corn pancakes) every night from 5pm to 8pm. This woman shapes pre-cooked corn dough into a little bowl:
Then she fills the bowl with grated cheese
Before closing it up and patting it into an arepa shape on top of a square of banana leaf:
Her husband then cooks them. First they sit on a hot griddle with their little bit of banana leaf underneath to keep them from sticking.
Once they're well-cooked, he puts them on a grill inside his contraption, right on top of the flame:
The griddle is wood-fueled.
And here I am enjoying the final product:
It's filled with melted cheese
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