Antigua is one of our favorite cities in the world. Surrounded by volcanoes, one of which is active, it’s a great base camp for mountain biking and hiking adventures, including hikes up the Acatenango volcano and mountain biking. Antigua also has awesome markets and restaurants. It’s a beautiful city at any time of day, but especially during the “golden hour” before sunset when it’s colorful buildings and churches glow in the beautiful light of the Guatemala highlands.

There are several good regions to hike in in Guatemala. We did a 3 day, 2 night hike in the Ixil Region. We’d also recommend doing a hike in the Todos Santos region (in fact it might be even better than hiking in the Ixil Region).

Several hours to the north of Chichicastenango, is a fascinating and off the beaten path indigenous region of Guatemala. It’s a great place for hikes through the Sierra de os Cuchumatanes mountains. Nebaj is the heart of the Ixil Region. We’d recommend going to Nebaj to stock up on food and supplies and to arrange tours at the El Descanso restaurant (which is also the location of an agency that runs tours). A better place to stay is Hacienda San Antonio on the outskirts of Acul which you can get to from Nebaj in a collectivo.

Good mountain biking is hard to come by in Central America. So I was psyched to get some great rides in Guatemala. While in Acul, I rode to numerous indigenous communities on dirt roads. Unless you are willing to wander around a bit looking for the trails, I’d recommend hiring Brendan, the gringo owner of Mountain Bike Guatemala, to ride with you. In addition to day tours, Brendan also runs multi day rides from Tecpan to Lago de Atlitan.

Guatemala is a great place to hike up volcanoes. We made the easy hike up the Pacaya volcano in Antigua. When we return, we will bring a longer telephoto lens on our trip and complete the harder ascent of Acatenangoo to get early morning photos of the Active Fuego volcano (yes, that’s our excuse for not hiking up Acatenango this time and we’re sticking with it).

Guatemala is a great place to learn Spanish. It’s cheap and there are numerous places to study it, including in Antigua. We took informal lessons from a woman in the Ixil Triangle but would have preferred to take classes in Antigua if we had been able to find a good campground there.

Even if you have seen plenty of Maya ruins in Belize or Mexico (like we had), Tikal is still worth it. It’s a huge ruin in the jungle and there’s a lot to see, including wildlife. It’s also sparsely populated compared to more other more popular ruins like Palenque or the larger ruins on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.