Antigua Guatemala Colonial Trail

About this pack

A 7-day premium trip to Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala, taking in Santa Catalina Arch, Volcán de Agua, Lake Atitlán and Tikal temples.

Inside the Antigua Guatemala Colonial Trail trip

Antigua Guatemala Colonial Trail opens beneath the Santa Catalina Arch, one of the city's most recognisable landmarks, spanning 5th Avenue North. Built in the 17th century, the arch originally connected the Santa Catalina convent to a school on the opposite side of the street, allowing the convent's cloistered nuns to pass between the two buildings without stepping outside; a clock was added on top during the era of the Central American Federation in the 1830s, and the design proved influential enough that the Guatemala Post Office Building in Guatemala City was later modelled on it.

Rising above the city is Volcán de Agua, an extinct stratovolcano reaching 3,760 metres and towering more than 3,500 metres above the Pacific coastal plain to the south. Local Kaqchikel Maya have long called the mountain Hunapú, and the Spanish used the same name until 10 September 1541, when a catastrophic lahar swept down from its slopes and destroyed the original Guatemalan capital, now known as Ciudad Vieja, killing the governor Beatriz de la Cueva among others; the destructive flood of water and volcanic debris that followed prompted the mountain's modern Spanish name, Volcán de Agua, or "Volcano of Water," distinguishing it from the nearby Volcán de Fuego, or "Volcano of Fire." The capital was subsequently moved to what became Antigua Guatemala, and coffee is grown today on the volcano's lower slopes.

The route continues to Lake Atitlán, the deepest lake in Central America at 340 metres, filling a vast caldera formed by a supervolcanic eruption around 79,500 years ago that ejected as much as 300 cubic kilometres of ash — enough to be detected as a stratigraphic marker from Florida to Ecuador. Three volcanoes ring the caldera today, among them the still-active Volcán Atitlán, and the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt is said to have called it the most beautiful lake in the world, a judgment the writer Aldous Huxley echoed in his 1934 travel book "Beyond the Mexique Bay," comparing it favourably to Lake Como. The towns and villages around its shore remain rooted in living Maya heritage, sustained largely by the Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel communities who maintain traditional textile arts and farming practices on the surrounding slopes, where coffee, avocado, corn and beans are the principal crops.

The trail closes deep in the northern rainforest at Tikal, one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centres of the pre-Columbian Maya civilisation, likely known in antiquity as Yax Mutal. Monumental construction at the site dates back to the 4th century BC, and Tikal reached its height during the Classic Period, from roughly 200 to 900 AD, when it dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically and militarily while maintaining contact with the distant metropolis of Teotihuacan in central Mexico — a connection reflected in hieroglyphic evidence that one of Tikal's ruling dynasties may have been founded by conquerors from that city in the 4th century AD. Population estimates for the city at its peak range from 10,000 to as high as 90,000 people across an area later mapped to include roughly 3,000 structures, before a gradual decline culminated in the site's abandonment by the end of the 10th century — leaving behind the temple pyramids that rise today above the surrounding rainforest canopy, a fitting close to a route that has already moved through colonial arches, an active volcanic caldera and one of Central America's deepest lakes.

• Arco de Santa Catalina — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Volcán de Agua — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Lake Atitlán — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Tikal — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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