Be prepared to stay longer (perhaps WAY longer) than you plan! The town is truly the black hole of Central America. You think you’ll visit for a weekend, you stay a week. Visit for a week, expect to make it a month. Yes, it’s gringo-packed, but I actually like the town far better than other tourist hotspots in Guatemala – Antigua, for example. San Pedro is not for fanny-pack tourists (unless they come over for the day from San Marcos or Panajachel), it’s for grittier travellers and freaks and fun. You can easily live for five dollars a day, less if you’re smart and make friends with the bartenders at Freedom and don’t eat out too often, and that would include a gorgeous lakeview room with a yard full of hammocks.

But please, don’t just hang out at Freedom and lounge on the pillow piles eating pot cookies at Zoolah (although those things are fun) – hang out at the market everyday (the restaurants in town are nice, but so are the cheap cheap tostadas and fresh fruit), meet the people who lived there before the gringos came, and learn (as well as share) something with the locals. It’s easy to form a bubble around yourself in San Pedro, but you’ll have more fun if you don’t!