Kendrick Cabrera: enhancing the lake experience

While making my way from El Suave to Bar Bufon on a busy Saturday night, I noticed new murals on a small house near Zoola. Firelight seeped through the trees in the back and hot Latin rhythms bounced along the street. Punta-Cometa Café Bar, the official name of this new nightclub, had opened just the same day. Halfway between Freedom and El Barrio, it should become a popular spot for party-animals running up and down the trail each night in search of the “real thing.”

Kendrick Cabrera, a native chapin from the capital, found the spot of his dreams only a few months ago. Punta Cometa offers an open-air dance floor with a fireplace, a veranda with some chairs and tables, UV-lights and pretty wall paintings in the bathroom (oh, it is an experience), and a fully-equipped bar offering three Cuba Libres for Q10.

Cabrera moved to San Pedro with dreams of starting his own business, fed up with everything involving a tie and suit. He plans to stay open all through the year, making Punta-Cometa a real niche for people in search of the human side of San Pedro. Speaking an almost flawless English, Kendrick believes it is all up to service and atmosphere to keep the crowds active and happy. An avid cartoonist, Kendrick invites anyone with an artistic mood or creative ideas to come and paint the walls of Punta-Cometa, big white surfaces he deliberately left bare to provide canvas for his friends. “Because everyone passing through the gates becomes a friend,” he emphasizes after saying goodbye.

PAST SPOTLIGHTS...

Claudio da Rey: an Italian with a bicycle

Arriving at the Panajachel Dock in San Pedro la Laguna, the cobblestoned main road leads up towards the city center, passing the market. Just across the market entrance, a bright yellow sign to the left marks El Pollo Pedrito, with menu economico from Q15 and whole grilled chicken for Q57. A tall and lean middle-aged man works alone behind the counter, mixing finely chopped chicken breast with egg yolk, as it turns out, to make meat loaf for his chicken burgers. Claudio da Rey, a native Italian from Piemonte, is the restaurant owner, waiter, cook and cleaner behind the counter. Visiting a friend in San Pedro in the early nineties, he, like so many others, opted to stay a bit more. And a bit more.

After a couple of years he opened an Italian Restaurant, but the work was just too much. And people usually don’t come to San Pedro to work their asses off. So Claudio went to the States, where he had the opportunity to pursue his lifelong love and hobby: cycling. His professional football carrier sidelined by a knee injury in his early twenties, Claudio found a new purpose in his bicycle and started to devour those miles. After winning the Georgia Tours and the Bridge to Bridge competition, amongst several others, he moved back to San Pedro for good. He opened his small but tidy restaurant last year in October, and still cycles thirty miles a day in the surrounding mountains and goes on 100-mile trips around the lake. All of his training paid off when Claudio won first place at the Bicimania competition in Antigua this January.

Claudio’s main reason for choosing San Pedro is tranquilo. The peace, the laid back atmosphere, the climate, the scenery, it all sums it up.  And yeah, doing a job you like (and not overdoing it), being able to spend all the time you want with your girlfriend, pet dog and lifelong hobby, living your prime years at ease are things that only wise people like da Rey are able to achieve.