Some countries come highly recommended by fellow overlanders and Guatemala is one such country. What should we expect? Well… apparently, we’ll find a beautiful country, friendly people, pretty town plazas, lots to see and do, reasonable prices, but bad roads. And volcanos. Lots of volcanos. These are very scenic, but they do have a tendency to be rather active here. So active in fact, that Volcán Fuego catastrophically erupted just a few weeks ago with a tragic loss of life in surrounding villages that has reached hundreds. Travelling Guatemala, we (briefly) encounter a new kind of fear and a sobering reality-check to respect nature.

As we arrive in Guatemala from Honduras, we don’t doubt that we’ll find many more things than volcanos to interest us here. However, we start as we mean to go on, by making our first stop by a beautiful crater lake in an (extinct) volcano – Volcán Ipala. The track up to Ipala is very much for 4×4, high-clearance vehicles, but nothing Cuthbert can’t cope with. After this, we route cross-country towards the capital (imaginatively named… Guatemala City) passing more volcanos and lakes. It doesn’t take us long to see why Guatemala came so highly recommended.

Guate and the Plazas travelling guatemala

It suits our (very roughly) planned circuit of the country to fit Guatemala City, better known as ‘Guate’ to his mates, into the itinerary at an early stage. We park-up in the grounds of a lovely Swiss-owned hotel on the outskirts of town and get an Uber into town. Incidentally…. we’re new to this ‘Uber-thing’. We only just discovered it a few months ago in Panama City and have to say, it’s a marvellous thing. No more negotiating with opportunist taxi drivers. Some German overlanders parked-up with us paid 175 Quetazles (around £17.50) for a ride into town in a local taxi. For us with an Uber, just 69 Quetzales (£6.90). No-brainer, huh?

Anyway… I digressed. We’re here to look around Guate City. The verdict? Well… it didn’t really grab us as a Latin American hot-spot, but it’s not in the same league as Bolivia’s La Paz for dreadfulness. It’s worth a day or two of your time. There are a couple of well-presented museums, a slightly bizarre copy of Paris’ Eiffel Tower spanning one of the major road junctions, and of course, a lovely main plaza with well-preserved colonial architecture.

While we’re on the subject of the plaza… anyone who has spent any time in the Latin American region can’t fail to have noticed the ubiquitous ‘plaza central’. There’s one in every (I mean, every) town. We learned an interesting little factoid about the Latin American plaza. It’s not, as we previously suspected, a style-thing. No. It’s a legal/military thing. Back in the day, the Spanish passed a law requiring every town to have one for military parades, pomp and ceremony.  That’s why they’re everywhere in Latin America.

Today the plaza is really the heart of every city, town or village. It’s where everyone gathers. It’s where street-vendors sell cheap food, kids ride their bikes, teenagers take their first dates, old folk sit to ‘chew the fat’, shoe-shiners polish shoes, and it seems still in Guate City, the local farmer walks his goats! The plaza central is always a good place to start in a town and Guate is no exception with its cathedral and national palace.

Guate is a fun couple of days, but we’re keen to move on to the much more picture-perfect Antigua.

Antigua and a new kind of fear

Antigua is the kind of place travellers get stuck for days, or even weeks. It’s not to small, not too big. Touristy without being overwhelmingly so. Super-picturesque with a fabulously sunny but not too hot climate. Lots of nice shops, cafes and restaurants. A nice plaza. And for the well-equipped overlander… a free campsite. Yes, if you have your own bathroom on board, the tourist police will allow you to park-up in their grassy, shady compound for free. Brilliant idea! What’s not to like?

It was while we were parked-up in Antigua one night that we acquired a new type of ‘fear’. Now… we don’t mean to brag, but after over four and a half years of living in a truck and parking-up in some bizarre and some less than salubrious, spots, we have learned to be a tad blasé about things going on outside in the night.

We’ve tolerated drunken shenanigans of local lads, violent storms blowing rooves off adjacent buildings, wandering llamas and cows scratching themselves on Cuthbert, howler monkeys outside the window, even elephants tearing branches off the trees under which we are parked. It’s all in a day’s (or rather a night’s) overlanding. The new fear, or at least new to us, is that of deep, loud rumbling noises when parked not far from an active volcano, in an area that still has volcanic ash scattered around from the most recent eruption.

Fortunately, we have no personal experience of a volcano eruption and long may that continue to be the case. But what we can say is that being parked in a valley, surrounded by mountains and active volcanos, the deep rumbling and boom of a thunder-crack echoing and reverberating around the valley, comes very close to what we imagine an eruption to sound like. Thunderstorms come very big and very loud here at this time of the year and normally they’re accompanied by the irritating noise of the torrential rain on the flat roof. But this time there was no rain, just a very deep and deafening crack-boom, reverberating outside.

The noise woke and startled us for a few moments, then we realised the ground was still. No shaking. Surely an eruption would be accompanied by an earthquake, some physical ground movement, wouldn’t it? We didn’t really know. As the noise continued for what seemed like a few minutes (okay… probably only seconds, but they were the longest seconds ever!) we figured that by now there might be some visible sign of the eruption in the sky, an ash-cloud or something? We peeped out under our black-out blinds and saw nothing, then suddenly… phew! We have never been more pleased to see a bolt of lightning in our entire lives! If there is lightning, the noise must be thunder. And relax. Back to sleep. In the morning, we signed-up to the Guatemalan national on-line seismological warning service. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

Few turtles, many nuts

Anyway, the thunder didn’t put us off exploring more of the area. From Antigua we did a trip down to the coast and out to some of the surrounding countryside and villages. We headed to the Monterrico seaside and a turtle hatchery camp. It’s still not against the law to collect and eat turtle eggs in Guatemala, so in nesting season the conservation volunteers have a race to get to the nests to save the eggs from the egg-hunters.

We had been led to believe that turtle season is in full-swing and that there would be 20, 30 maybe 40 or 50 of them coming up the beach to nest every night. Sadly… Fake News ☹.  It seems that peak-season isn’t until end-August or into September. We could hang around and wait a few weeks, but it’s so damned hot and humid down here, we’re really not inclined to do so. Antigua may be in volcano land, but at least it has the most agreeable climate.

On the way back to Antigua, we stop off to see some fascinating old artefacts at El Baúl and some chubby stone carvings at La Democracia. Both are well worth a stop if you’re passing. Just outside of Antigua, another stop is the Valhalla macadamia farm. Nuts. That’s a new one on us. We’ve done vineyards, coffee, tea and cocoa plantations, pineapple farms, but macadamias are a much less common phenomenon in these parts. Many things surprised and impressed us about the macadamia industry, but fear not, we’re not going to ramble-on with an impromptu eco-lesson on the many benefits of this crop. If you go there and see for yourself, you’ll be treated to not only some delicious macadamia pancakes, but also one of the most beautiful toilet facilities we’ve ever seen. Toilet… that’s a nice note to end on 😊.

Guatemala: Volcanos and Plazas Photos