Eco Hotel Uxlabil Atitlan

A House Built From the Patterns of Its Own Lake

San Juan La Laguna sits on the western shore of Atitlán, past San Pedro, and it is the village people mean when they say the lake still has quiet corners. Uxlabil stands above the water there, and the building is the argument. Ceilings carry the woven pattern of a petate, the reed mat that has furnished Guatemalan houses for centuries. Walls undulate in a way the owners describe as the lake's own surface under wind and passing boats. Rooms take the names of birds that live around the shore, and their sizes follow: the big ones belong to the big birds, among them the endangered horned guan.

Why It Works

Two things decided it. The first is that the design is not decoration applied afterwards but the reason the place exists, and that is rare anywhere, let alone on a lake where most accommodation is either a hostel or a villa rental. The second is the side of the water it chose. San Juan is a working village of weavers, painters and a coffee cooperative rather than a strip of bars, and a hotel here gives a traveller a reason to walk uphill into it. The house has been at this since the early two thousands, which shows in how settled it feels.

Why This Location

San Juan La Laguna is known for two things, and both are on foot from the hotel: the weaving cooperatives that still dye with plants rather than chemicals, and the galleries of the village painters, whose flattened aerial views of the lake hang in half the hotels in the country. A coffee cooperative runs tours of the slopes above. San Pedro La Laguna, louder and busier, is the next bay along. The volcanoes Tolimán and San Pedro close the view from the dock, and the ridge locally called the Maya Face is the sunrise walk. Lanchas cross to Panajachel through the morning.

Fast Facts

• Price: Premium

• Vibe: quiet, handmade, deliberately slow

• Rooms: each named for a bird of the lake and sized to it, with petate ceilings and undulating walls

• Best For: couples, travellers who came for the villages rather than the nightlife, anyone staying several nights on the lake

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the sauna maya, a Mayan steam bath used the way it has always been used here

• Dining: restaurant looking out over the lake

• Amenities: spa with jacuzzi and massage, sauna maya, private dock, complimentary kayaks, parking, pets accepted

• Attractions: San Juan weaving cooperatives and painters' galleries (a walk uphill), the coffee cooperative, San Pedro La Laguna, the Maya Face ridge at sunrise, Santiago Atitlán by boat

Rooms Named for the Birds of the Lake

The naming is not a theme, it is a system. Each room takes a bird found around Atitlán, and the room's proportions follow the bird's, so the categories read as a small field guide rather than a price list. Inside, the materials stay local and the two motifs repeat: the petate weave overhead and the wave in the plaster. Lake views are the point of the orientation, and the upper rooms take the full sweep across to the volcanoes.

The Dock, the Kayaks and the Sauna Maya

The hotel keeps its own dock, which on this lake is the difference between a stay and a series of negotiations: boats can come to you. Kayaks are there for guests, and the water off San Juan is calmest early, before the wind that Guatemalans call the xocomil gets up in the afternoon. Behind the rooms there is a spa with a jacuzzi and massage, and the sauna maya, a low steam bath in the Mayan tradition, which is what to book after a day of walking village lanes.

What to Know Before You Book

Reach San Juan by lancha from Panajachel or San Pedro; the road exists but the water is faster and better. Cross in the morning if you can, because the xocomil makes the afternoon crossing choppy. The building steps with the slope and the hotel states plainly that it is not set up for guests with reduced mobility, a consequence of how it is built into the hillside. Pets are welcome. Check in is from early afternoon and check out at midday.