A very exciting excursion that starts early in the morning, leaving at 5.00 a.m. after a good breakfast and making sure to bring enough snacks and water for a day’s trip. After an hour’s drive from Antigua to the town of La Soledad you will begin the ascent to the top of the Acatenango volcano, during which you will get four different microclimates, each of which you will cross in about an hour.

The first part of the trail goes through the same path that the locals use to access their fields; it is a steep trail that crosses cornfields and lily fields; this route allows you to acclimatize and warm up your muscles for the rest of the journey. Leaving this trail, you will find a cloud forest where the oldest trees of Acatenango are located, with an incredible biodiversity of flora and fauna; this type of forest is found in many of the highest mountains and volcanoes of Guatemala. Leaving the cloud forest, you get some of the most beautiful views of the other volcanoes: Atitlán, Tolimán, San Pedro, Santa María, Santo Tomás, Tajumulco and the Cuchumatanes mountain ranges.

In the third section of the trail, you pass through temperate coniferous forests and a tropical dry forest where you will find trees that have been knocked down by the storms of the volcano, and then reach the last section of the ascent on a path of sand and loose gravel and some dwarf pines and moss at high altitude. As you approach the summit you can see the rocky surface, exposed by the winds that constantly whips the peak; from the top you can enjoy the spectacle of the nearby Fuego volcano in constant eruption, with explosions of gas, rock and lava constantly launched. After an estimated time between half an hour and an hour at the top, you will begin the descent to La Soledad with a duration of three hours, and then return to Antigua with enough time to enjoy what this city has to offer at night.