Lake Atitlán

Lake Atitlán (Lago de Atitlán, atiˈtlan) is a lake in the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre mountain range. The lake is located in the Sololá Department of southwestern Guatemala. It is known as the deepest lake in Central America. Atitlán means "between the waters". In the Nahuatl language, "atl" is the word for water, and "titlan" means between. The "tl" at the end of the word "atl" is dropped (because it is a grammatical suffix) and the words are combined to form "Atitlán". The lake has a maximum depth of about and an average depth of . Its surface area is . It is approximately with around of water. Atitlán is technically an endorheic lake, feeding from two nearby rivers and not draining into the ocean. It is shaped by deep surrounding escarpments and three volcanoes on its southern flank. The lake basin is volcanic in origin, filling an enormous caldera formed by a supervolcanic eruption 84,000 years ago. The culture of the towns and villages surrounding Lake Atitlán is influenced by the Maya people. The lake is about west-northwest of Antigua. It should not be confused with the smaller Lake Amatitlán. Lake Atitlán is renowned as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and is one of Guatemala's most important national and international tourist attractions. German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt called it "the most beautiful lake in the world," and Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it in his 1934 travel book Beyond the Mexique Bay: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing." The area around San Marcos has particularly tall cliffs abutting the lake and in recent years has become renowned for cliff diving. The area supports extensive coffee and avocado orchards and a variety of farm crops, most notably corn and onions. Significant agricultural crops include: corn, onions, beans, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, garlic, chile verde, strawberries and pitahaya fruit.