Seven Days in Antigua, Two Volcanoes and My First Earthquake

Do not stay in Guatemala City. There is not much to do there and the traffic can be genuinely, spectacularly terrible. Fly in and get straight out to Antigua.

I took a rideshare from the airport and it ran about $35. A shared shuttle is cheaper, somewhere around $20, and the collective is cheaper still. The drive is supposed to be an hour. Budget two. The traffic getting out of the capital is the whole variable and it is the one thing nobody can promise you.

I stayed at Barbara's Hostel & Boutique and never moved. Seven nights, one bed, including the two 5am starts. If you are doing both volcanoes out of Antigua, having one base you do not have to pack up is worth more than whatever you would save hopping around.

I dropped my bag and went straight back out which I recommend, because Antigua at night is the best possible first impression. The streets are cobblestone, low, and lit warm, and almost everything is one storey so the sky stays huge. I was at Parque Central at 8pm and it was full, on a Wednesday, for no particular reason!

Dinner was El Sabor del Tiempo on 5a Avenida Norte, a corner place with dark wood and old bottles on shelves. I sat down at and could not leave. Two hours, first night, no easing in.

Then I walked a loop back through the square and went to bed, because the volcano was in two days and I already knew I would regret a late one.

I booked a walking tour online through GuruWalk and spent the whole morning walking the streets of Antigua and learning its history.

We started at Parque Central and were at the Cathedral of San José by 10:43. The standard route covers the square, the Santa Catalina Arch and the cathedral, which is exactly the orientation you want on your first full day. It also teaches you the trick of Antigua, which is that the streets are laid out on a grid and Volcán de Agua sits at the end of a lot of them. You look down an ordinary road of parked cars and laundry and there is a volcano closing the view. Please make sure to tip the guide at the end!

I was out from 9am to 4pm in the heat. Antigua is cobblestone end to end and it is not gentle cobblestone. Wear the shoes you would actually hike in, not the cute ones and LOTS of water.

Hike day!

Up at 5:30 and outside on the road by 6:30 waiting on the Pacaya pickup. Got to the park in San Vicente Pacaya and made it to the lava rocks by 9:30am.

Back in town I went to the market in the late afternoon, and this is the tip I would give anyone doing Acatenango: buy your warm layer here. The clothing aisles are stacked with secondhand outdoor gear and I found a giant purple Columbia rain jacket for a fraction of what a rental costs. It was three sizes too big. It is also the jacket I wore at 12,000 feet two days later, so I stand by it.

Dinner was Hector's Bistro on 6a Calle Poniente. I had steak in a cream sauce with fondant potatoes and spinach, on a black plate, and it was very good and not remotely what I expected to find in a colonial town of 40,000 people!

Then Las Vibras on 5a Avenida Norte, and that is where I felt my first earthquake. Three-story bar, neon on the wall, and the whole building started swinging sideways. Magnitude 6.1! Fifteen to twenty seconds, a long horizontal sway rather than a jolt. Nobody around me seemed remotely bothered, which told me everything.

Which is the actual tip: Guatemala is a seismic country and it is not a rare event. The reason Antigua is a city of beautiful ruins is that earthquakes kept flattening it. Read the exit, know which floor you are on, then order the drink.

Slow start, swollen legs. I was around Parque Central most of the day, which in Antigua is a completely acceptable way to spend one. You buy a coffee, you sit on a bench under the trees by the fountain, and you watch a town that is not in a hurry.

Then I went back to La Merced properly. Then the church is the yellow baroque one everybody photographs from the street, all white icing plasterwork on a mustard front.

Go upstairs, the ticket gets you onto the upper level, and there is a run of arched windows along the side that frame the church's own dome against the mountains behind it. That was my favourite thing I saw all week and I nearly missed it, because from the ground you cannot tell there is an up.

One practical note: La Merced the church and La Merced the ruins are two different tickets and two different doors. Plenty of people put their head into the free church, decide they have seen it, and walk back out past the entrance to the part that is actually worth the money. The ruins entrance is around the side.

Going in beats walking past. I had done the walking-past version two days earlier and it is not the same building.

Let's hike Acatenango!

Hiked up on a cloudy day and it was overcast the whole way up, which meant no sun on my back for five hours, and everyone I spoke to who went up in clear weather described a completely different and much worse day.

It is strenuous. It is genuinely strenuous, and it is strenuous in a boring way, which is that it is steep loose volcanic sand and it just does not stop being steep. But it is not technical and nothing about it is dangerous. I took as many breaks as I needed and I took them whenever I wanted them. That is the whole strategy. Nobody is timing you, the guides have seen every pace there is, and the people who suffer are the ones racing someone else's legs.

Base camp sits on the Yepocapa flank, the side that faces Fuego, and when I got there it was inside a cloud. Six of us, wooden walking staffs, borrowed jackets, and fog thick enough that you could not see the volcano you had come for.

Then night came and it was freezing!! I had my market jacket and it was not enough. You cannot pack too many layers for this, and I mean that literally.

Most groups offer a second hike that evening out to the Fuego ridge for an extra fee which I could not imagine doing in the rain. I sat at camp instead and watched the headlamps of the people who went, a line of little lights moving across the dark on the ridge opposite. Honestly that was the better view, and I was warm, and it was free. I got about four hours of sleep.

Up at 6:04 and moving in the dark for the summit, and this is the hard part of Acatenango.

The summit push is about an hour and it is suffocating! You are near 13,000 feet, you have slept four hours, it is pitch black and freezing, and your lungs simply do not fill. I could not breathe properly the entire way up, but I was determined to make it.

The sunrise from the top is what you came for. You are above the cloud layer looking down at it, with Fuego smoking away below you, and the light comes up sideways across the top of the weather.

Then back down to camp, where I ate a tongueful of electrolyte powder straight out of the sachet, and something switched on. The descent is the opposite of the climb in every way. It is loose sand and gravity and you basically run it. I was at the front the entire way down and it took roughly a quarter of the time the climb did.

Overnight Acatenango treks run roughly $90 to $150 and normally include the A-frame shelter, a sleeping bag, three meals and transport from Antigua.

Last morning, and I spent it the way you should spend a last morning, which is slowly and mostly eating.

Breakfast was San Martín on 6a Calle Poniente , a bakery and cafe a couple of blocks off the square. After two volcanoes in four days I wanted good bread and a coffee that arrived quickly, and that is exactly what it is.

Then I walked one more loop of the grid before the shuttle. That is the thing about Antigua being small. Seven days in and I could still turn a corner into a street I had not walked, and there would be Agua at the end of it doing its trick again.

Almost everybody treats this town as a two-night base for Acatenango and then leaves, and the two days I liked best, the market day and the La Merced day, were the ones that had nothing to do with climbing anything.

If you are moving on from here, the tourist shuttles all leave from the agencies around the square and you can book one the day before, or the morning of if you are not fussy about the hour.

Seven days, two volcanoes, one earthquake, one purple jacket. I would not shorten it.