Acatenango 4x4 Off Roading Adventure and Day Hike

What to Expect

4X4 Off-Road Ride:

Our group leaves from the Old Town Outfitters Shop at 7:00 am, where you can fill up your water bottles and purchase any additional gear you might need. We will leave Antigua in our 4X4 car and drive through neighboring towns, getting a glimpse of the local life outside of Antigua. After about an hour’s drive, transitioning from concrete to dirt, we will arrive at the entrance of a farm sitting at the base of Volcán Acatenango. From there we will enter the dirt farm roads, spending the next hour traversing the maze of farmland and forest as we head up some hills you will doubt we can climb.

While we will be offered some amazing views on our ride, the extra beauty of this alternate route is that we cut off about 3½ hours of the typical hike, leaving a far easier trip to the summit, and giving us plenty of extra time. We will leave our car at an elevation of 11,483 feet (3,500 meters) and climb 2 hours on foot to the summit.

The Hike:

After we park our car and lace up our hiking shoes, we will take a beautiful trail up through temperate coniferous forest and tropical dry forest. This storm-beaten tree line was caught in a forest fire a decade back, leaving behind many starch-white petrified trees and a unique looking forest. Our trail turns to scree as we approach the saddle between Acatenango’s summit, and Punta Yepocapa, its false summit. We reach a brief resting point at the site of the crater formed by Acatenango’s last eruption in 1972. Here we admire the rugged volcanic landscape and jagged crater.

As we move on, we can see our final objective- a last 500 foot (150 meters) push up Acatenango’s scree slopes. As we gain elevation, we will be afforded magnificent views of Guatemala's volcanic chain, including the volcanoes of Lake Atitlán, the Western highlands, and even to Tajamulco. As we make our way onto the rim of the summit crater, we get our first glimpses of the spectacularly active Volcán Fuego.

At the summit, our group will rest and enjoy unparalleled 360-degree views of the entirety of the Guatemalan highlands – all the way to the border of Mexico. On the summit, our guide prepares a fresh picnic lunch, and we will sit 4 kilometers away from Fuego and hope for a high-altitude firework show. When we have finished, we will begin our hike back down to our car, a little over an hour-long, and we will switch back to some more 4X4 adventure as we head down the steep road. We will arrive back in Antigua in the afternoon around 4:00 pm with plenty of time for you to enjoy the delights of the old Spanish colonial capital.