Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you book or buy something through one of my links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend places and services I have personally used or vetted. If you are thinking about visiting Guatemala in November, you are looking at one … Read more
If you are thinking about visiting Guatemala in July, this guide will help you understand what the month is really like beyond the usual rainy season warnings. Yes, Guatemala in July falls during rainy season, but it is also one of the greenest, most culturally rich months of the year. Antigua celebrates Santiago Apóstol, Santiago … Read more
Guatemala’s national parks and nature reserves are where I go when I want to remember just how wild and beautiful my country still is. Cloud forests where the quetzal still flies. Jungle that has slowly reclaimed ancient Maya cities. A Caribbean lagoon where manatees drift through the mangroves. Pacific beaches where sea turtles come ashore … Read more
The best eco lodges in Guatemala are the ones where sustainability is the whole reason the place exists, not a word added to the website later. I’m talking about private cloud forest reserves that protect quetzal habitat, lodges built by hand from local stone by the community that lives there, and working coffee and cacao … Read more
Community tourism in Guatemala means experiences that are designed, run, and owned by the communities themselves: the coffee tour led by the farmer who grew the coffee, the weaving class taught by the cooperative that owns the workshop, the restaurant where your lunch pays for a town’s nutrition program. This guide is my list of … Read more
Responsible travel in Guatemala starts with knowing what your visit costs and what it can give back. This guide covers what ethical travel actually looks like here: what’s happening on the volcanoes, how tourism is changing the Maya communities around Lake Atitlán, how to tell real ceremonies from commercial packages, where to stay and shop … Read more
Choosing where to stay at Lake Atitlán is not as simple as picking the hotel with the best views. The villages are different enough that the wrong base can mean spending your days on lanchas getting to where you actually want to be. This guide covers the best hotels in Lake Atitlán honestly: from the … Read more
Most 5-day Guatemala itineraries try to cover three destinations and end up doing none of them well. This one doesn’t. It focuses on two places: Lake Atitlán and Antigua Guatemala. Where to base yourself, how to move between them, what is worth your time, and what to skip. Written by a Guatemalan who has been … Read more
Every Guatemala itinerary article you click sends you down the same route: Antigua first, then the lake, then back to the airport. This is the complete Guatemala itinerary guide built to fix that, covering every trip length from a quick four days to a full two weeks, with the routes I’d actually send my own … Read more
Women in Santiago Atitlán still wear their beautiful huipiles embroidered with birds and flowers to buy tomatoes at the market, the same way their mothers and grandmothers did long before tourists arrived. I’ve been coming here since I was a kid growing up in Guatemala, and that detail still tells me more about this town … Read more
