Hiking Acatenango volcano in Guatemala
Whilst travelling in Guatemala we decided to hike the volcano Acatenango. After a Google search we found an infamous local guide that everyone raved about — his name was Gilmer. No sooner were we booked on the hike with little to no information about the company we were doing it through — other than his name was Gilmer and he advised us to bring water and warm clothing.
We arrived at Gilmer’s around 10am and re-packed our rucksacks to include a tent, sleeping mat, food and warm clothes. We had two guides that escorted us up the Volcano — one smiley, the other grumpy. All of Gilmer’s guides are part of the local search and rescue team so if something had gone wrong you’d be in great hands. It cost 300 quetzals for the tour, which is $40 USD and the money goes directly to his village.
The first hour of the hike was definitely the hardest; it went through the local farmlands, and the start of the cloud forest. Imagine 15kgs on your back, 30 degrees Celsius, 50-degree incline, loose scree and taking two steps up, one step back. It was safe to say we were questioning our ability to complete the entire walk after the first hour. However, we did take plenty of breaks which helped a lot. The degree of incline calmed down a bit in the cloud forest and once we hit the alpine section, hallelujah! We had 45 minutes of blissful undulating hills. The incline crept up substantially for the last 25 minutes before base camp, but the end was in sight and everyone pushed through.
Camp was a man-made concave on the side of the volcano — about 350m from the summit. Our guides expertly erected everyone’s tents, collected firewood and set about making us dinner. We were all completely absorbed by Fuego, which played hide and seek with the clouds. Fuego was roughly 2km away from our campsite and every 30 minutes or so there was a deafening crack from an explosion followed by a plume of ash-filled smoke.
Once night began to fall the real fun began. Our breath was taken away as we saw the magnitude of Fuego’s eruptions — lava and red hot rocks would be hurtled into the sky and then roll down the side of the volcano making the top third completed covered in glowing red.
After dinner we were all keen to capture Fuego but a big thunderstorm rolled in which forced everyone to retreat to their tents. It’s safe to say we didn’t get much sleep due to the thunder, lightening, and exploding volcano. Traveller tip: bring earplugs.
Due to the aforementioned explosions we decided to get up at 2.30am since the thunderstorm clouds had dissipated — leaving clear sight of Fuego and her colourful explosions. A tripod, long shutter speed and a 50mm and 16–35mm lens did the trick to get the winning photos of Fuego.
The rest of the group were woken at 3.30am ready to hike to the summit and watch the sunrise. It was a beautiful morning watching Fuego erupt against a pink sky. We shared that surreal moment with other tour groups and some local dogs that decided they quite fancied watching the sunrise at 3,976m above sea level too.
On one side of Acatenango you could see the mountain range that divided Guatemala and Mexico, the other being Agua and Fuego. After admiring the 360 degree views for an hour or so it was time to head back down to base camp for breakfast and to defrost the fingers.
Heading down from the summit had to be the best part of the walk as you literally dug you heals into the loose volcanic gravel whilst taking giant moon hooper jumps — it was was bloody fantastic. After a quick breakfast we made it back down to the pick up point, which took 2.5 hours. A once and a life time, bucket list experience that every adventure seeker should do.
