Hippies wash ashore _ and stay _ on Lake Atitlan.(Chicago Tribune)

LAKE ATITLAN, Guatemala -- Wherever the camera points, there's blue. Blue sky. Shimmering blue water turning quickly to a darker blue as the lake dips deeper. Hillsides bathed in soft blue sunlight that bounces off the mountains, which seem folded into one another like paper sculptures.

And beyond the low ridges rest the volcanoes, which are bathed like everything else around the lake in various shades of blue that blend with a gray haze from the growing heat and an increasingly yellow tinge from the powerful sun overhead.

It is morning and I am slowly paddling a canoe, hugging the shore, uncertain where I am headed, and what I will find.

The lake is a carpet with small ripples here and there. …