With our starting point in Antigua, we are perfectly placed to start a little adventure during our big travel adventure. We climb the 3976m high Acatenango in two days, with an overnight stay at about 3600m. Come with us on a strenuous but rewarding hike!

Day 1 – Ascent to the basecap

We are picked up early in the morning by a shuttle bus in Antigua. We have packed our luggage with warm clothes and enough water for two days and finally we really need all our hiking equipment.
After breakfast with the tour organization’s family, we are ready for the climb up to our base camp. The hike starts at around 2400m and ascends on steep but mostly wide paths. This is one of the busiest mountains in whole of Guatemala, so there are a lot of people on the trail every day. There are 18 of us in our group, but in total there are several hundred on the way up the Acatenango volcano and probably a similar number on the way back from their ascent the day before. So, it’s a real migration of people. But this time it hardly bothers us, and we get to know some of the people in our group a little better. Many of them have been traveling in Central America for some time and we are able to exchange interesting travel experiences with each other.

Day 1 – Arrival at base camp

After 5.5 hours of constant climbing with a few short breaks for the whole group, we arrive at our base camp tired but happy. We won’t be sleeping in tents, but in very simple corrugated iron shacks. That’s good news, given the constant wind and cooler temperatures. At the same time, the cloud cover clears and we can really enjoy the panoramic view of the Guatemalan landscape for the first time. Directly in front of us is Antigua with the Agua volcano, further to the right we can see the Pacific coast and diagonally behind us we can see as far as the volcanoes on Lake Atitlan and a little of the lake itself. Wonderful! And all this is topped by the immediate attraction in front of us: El Fuego. The El Fuego volcano is still active today and spews out lava and clouds of smoke at surprisingly regular intervals. This spectacle is said to be even more impressive after dark, so we rest in anticipation until dusk sets in.

Day 1 – Side trip to El Fuego

Paddy still has energy left and joins the group for the additional hike to the El Fuego volcano. This hike descends to the pass between the El Fuego and Acatenango volcanoes, only to climb up again on the other side towards the bubbling crater mouth. This is a really interesting feeling. On the one hand knowing that the volcano is very active and constantly spewing out lava, on the other hand it feels like any other hike in alpine terrain. From a distance of just 1.5 km, we wait in our smaller group for the next eruptions in order to get the best possible picture of the eruption and lava flows in the dark. After a long wait, we are lucky enough to see two eruptions from this close distance. It is like a red firework display at the top of the volcano, a little later the lava chunks hit the slopes behind the crater again and form small, glowing orange trails in the slopes immediately behind the crater rim. For the first time seeing a spewing volcano, the experience is definitely very impressive!

Day 2 – Ascent to the crater rim of Acatenango

The night at this altitude was cold and very wet as we effectively slept in the cloud cover over Guatemala. Even when we get up at 3.45 am, the cloud cover is still thick and we climb up to the crater rim with our headlamps through the dense fog. Unfortunately, the weather gods are not kind to us, we are at 3976m, but apart from the orange glow of the rising sun, we can see virtually nothing. Strong winds and the high humidity of the fog make the wait an extremely cold ordeal. We decide early on to descend back to base camp and are at least rewarded with a magnificent panorama and sunshine. The fog was just a summit cloud over the peak of Acatenango.

Day 2 – Descent back to the starting point

Soon after breakfast, we descend back to our starting point. As we have drunken a lot of our water by now, the descent is disproportionately easier than the ascent. After only 2 hours we are back at 2400m, from where we are taken back to Antigua by shuttle.

Acatenango – another highlight on our journey through Central and South America! We can only recommend this climb. It is strenuous, but if the weather is just a little bit right, the wonderful view and the experience of the active El Fuego make up for the effort many times over!