Coverage / Guatemala
Guatemala
Central America
Where Guatemala earns a visit: 7 activities across 10 curated destinations.
7 activities · 10 pairings · 13 verified providers
What you can do in Guatemala
Trekking / Hiking
- AcatenangoJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecAcatenango is the trek people come to Guatemala for, and the reason is the volcano next door. You climb through farmland, cloud forest and finally bare volcanic sand to a high camp around 3,600 metres, and from there you look across a saddle at Volcan de Fuego, one of the most active volcanoes in the Americas. Fuego erupts every twenty minutes or so, day and night, throwing ash and glowing rock above its crater, and after dark the camp watches the orange bursts against the sky. The summit push starts before dawn on the second day for sunrise from 3,976 metres, with the whole chain of highland volcanoes floating above the cloud. It is a hard two days at altitude and in the cold, but the payoff, a live eruption seen from a facing ridge, is rare anywhere on earth.
- Semuc ChampeyJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecSemuc Champey is one of those places that looks invented. In a fold of Alta Verapaz jungle, the Cahabon river disappears underground into a limestone cave, and over the top runs a 300-metre natural bridge holding a staircase of pools in every shade of turquoise and green. The classic day combines a short, steep hike up to the El Mirador viewpoint, where the whole ladder of pools opens up below the forest, with hours of swimming and pool-hopping down the terraces. Most people add the K'an Ba caves, a river cave explored on foot and by swimming with only a candle in hand, plus a rope swing and tubing on the river outside. It is remote and takes effort to reach, which is part of why the pools stay so clear and the crowds stay small.
Witness / Attend
- Semana Santa en La Antigua GuatemalaAntiguaMar AprSemana Santa in Antigua is the great cultural event of Guatemala, a week when the whole colonial city turns into a stage for Holy Week. In the hours before each procession, families and church brotherhoods build alfombras, carpets of dyed sawdust, flowers and pine needles laid the length of the street in intricate patterns, only to have them walked over and destroyed as the procession passes. Enormous wooden floats, some carried by eighty men in purple robes, move slowly through clouds of incense to funeral bands, following routes that can take twelve hours. It grew out of the city's colonial Catholic tradition and is now recognised as some of the most spectacular Easter observance anywhere. Coming for it means crowds and full hotels, but also a living ritual on a scale you will not see elsewhere.
- Festival de Barriletes Gigantes de SumpangoSumpangoNovOn 1 November, the Day of the Dead, the town of Sumpango stages one of Guatemala's most striking traditions. Local teams spend months building barriletes gigantes, giant kites made from tissue paper and bamboo, some ten metres across, decorated with dense, brilliantly coloured Maya designs and messages honouring the dead. In the morning they are stood upright in a huge fan along the field beside the cemetery for everyone to walk among and photograph, and through the afternoon teams try to launch the flyable ones into the wind, a feat that takes dozens of people hauling on ropes. The Maya belief is that the kites connect the living with the spirits of the dead above the graves. It is free, deeply local and visually overwhelming, and it draws visitors from across the country and beyond.
- TikalJan Feb Mar Apr Nov DecTikal is the most powerful ancient city to visit in the Maya world, and part of what makes it extraordinary is that the jungle never left. Steep-sided temple-pyramids climb above the forest canopy, some more than sixty metres tall, in a city that ruled a large part of the Maya lowlands for centuries before it was abandoned around a thousand years ago. Because it lies inside a protected national park, the ruins share the site with spider and howler monkeys, ocellated turkeys, toucans and coatis, and the soundscape at dawn and dusk is as memorable as the architecture. The classic experience is the sunrise walk, standing on or below a temple as the forest wakes and howler monkeys roar out of the mist. It is remote, in the far north near Flores, but it is the single most compelling reason to travel to Guatemala's Peten.
Best months at a glance
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