Coming into Guatemala City by airplane, forests stretched in every direction, cut by enormous gorges punctuated with small arable areas on the tops of suitable hills. The capitol city is nestled on the high places between canyons.

I spent the night I arrived in the area right by the airport, showing my passport to the guards at the tall gates and small booth on the road into the neighborhood. They opened the path to me and were very friendly and helpful, joking with me as I found my quiet room at a hostel.

The next morning, I caught the bus to Lake Atitlan with a couple of hour stopover in Antigua, where I picked one direction and started walking. As I reached what seemed like the edge of town, I followed the flow of people up an impossibly steep cobblestone road that switchbacked up. I passed onto a dirt path and saw some schoolchildren laughing and having fun looking at a beautiful kitten. Near the top, I sat next to an ofrenda, the offerings people make when someone died on the road there.

The huge hill overlooked Antigua. I could see through the canopy of the eucalyptus trees who touched down far below. Workers layed and watched football on a break from collecting trash and terracing the enormous hill over the city. Groups of schoolchildren in uniforms walked slowly with their moms, all in Mayan dress, in groups up the hill, while other women carried huge baskets on their heads.

The bus took us up from Antigua, through the landscape I had seen from afar from the plane. Tiny towns rose up from the road on both sides, or down on one side. People bought and sold, hauled things in carts or bags, and wore cowboy hats or the bright colors and patterns of traditional Mayan dress. We went up and down the gorges, across the farms that spanned the relatively flat areas of the higher places. We passed through the monsoon rain of the afternoon. We reached the edge of the plain before the descent to the lake like the top of a rollercoaster, and careened down while dirtbikes passed us around the hairpin turns.

When we finally touched down in San Pedro, those of us on the bus and all of our things were dumped unceremoniously near the center of town. We were on a road down by the lake, downtown as they call it. The street was about as wide as one car, and tuktuks, motorcycles, mopeds, and people passed in both directions. A tuktuk driver and I loaded my two suitcases and guitar in the back and he drove me up the small, cobblestone streets of the town.

The town rises very steeply from the water. The docks jut out into the water from the main intersection in town, down below the small stoplight with arrows in either direction and the police whistling stop and go. The town is a labyrinth of alleys, some wide enough for a car, some barely wide enough for two abreast. Street art is everywhere, and there are shops thick along most of the corridors.

As you get out of central areas, abuelas sit in doorways selling bananas, passionfruit, or whatever they or their family harvested that day. Farms are stuffed into every conceivable area, with corn growing everywhere, sometimes right next to the walking path. Dogs lay everywhere — compliant, submissive, and charming.

The tuktuk driver drove me up, over, through turns, and the vertical, green, peopled world passed in a blur. We arrived at a nondescript bend in the road and the driver helped me find the path up to the airbnb. I had to haul my heavy stuff up starting between the concrete wall of small tienda and a corrugated metal fence, up a tiny walking path alternating concrete, stone, and dirt, at one point with a long board to get past the occasional mud or pond. The path stairstepped up next to doorways to houses, storerooms, and an improbable store selling traditional Mayan clothes. To the sides corn grew, then walls rose two, three stories high.

At the top, I found the place I was looking for at the end of the path. A green tree with a bearded face looked out from a small grotto. A small blue dragon flew among his branches. Above, glass was painted green on either side with a moon and the sun, and up the center rose a skull holding a glowing candle, a bat, and a nude woman dancing with bat wings and upraised hands that radiated glass ripples. All, topped by a little roof that made the shrine a place.

Here was the doorway into the Sanctuario.