Climbing Acatenango: the hardest, best thing I've done while travelling

A 3,976-metre volcano, a group of friends, porters who put us all to shame — and a front-row seat to an eruption.

I'll be honest about Acatenango: it's fun and games until it very suddenly isn't, and then it becomes one of the best things you'll ever do.

I did it in January 2024 — dry season, the right call — a group of friends plus a few strangers who joined our trek and weren't strangers by the top. It starts innocently: a van out of Antigua, a farmhouse breakfast, walking poles handed out with a smile that in hindsight was a warning.

The first hours are the honest brutality. You climb through farmland on loose volcanic sand — two steps up, one slide back — at altitude that quietly steals your air. The jokes flow for the first hour. By the third, our group had gone dead quiet, single file, everyone privately negotiating with their own legs. It's as much a mental test as a physical one: the trail just goes up, and up, and the only way through is to stop thinking about the top and count fifty more steps. Then another fifty.

And here's the thing that humbled us most: the local porters. While we wheezed under daypacks, they carried our big bags — plus food, water, firewood, sometimes two loads at once — up the same trail, in half the time, some of them in worn trainers, chatting away. Guys half our age gliding past like the mountain was flat. Whatever you tip, tip more. The whole trek is run by people from the villages on the volcano's skirts, and doing it with a local outfit means your money lands where it should — and you learn things no guidebook has: which farms grow what on the lower slopes, what Fuego's moods mean, how the mountain fits into life here rather than just Instagram.

Then you reach camp, about 3,600 metres up, and everything you paid in sweat gets refunded at once. Because across the valley, close enough to feel, is Volcán de Fuego — one of the most active volcanoes on earth — and it performs. A deep boom you feel in your chest, then a column of ash, and after dark, lava arcing down the cone like the planet showing off. We sat wrapped in blankets around the fire with hot chocolate (some smuggled-up wine may have been involved), watching eruptions light up the night. Nobody said much. There isn't much to say.

Summit push is optional, 4am, brutally cold, but worth it: sunrise at 3,976 metres above a sea of clouds, Fuego erupting below you, all of Guatemala's volcano chain going pink. In saying that, making it up to camp is tough enough, and the sunrise is just as good there too.

I can't say the walk down was easy either. The steep mountain had us sliding down into eachother (so pro tip to wear hiking shoes... your Asics won't cut it!), but the feelings of relief, gratitude and pride were unmatched once we reached the bottom.

Go. Train a little first — stairs, anything. Rent the warm gear in Antigua (it's genuinely freezing at camp). Take altitude seriously and walk slower than your ego wants. And when a porter overtakes you carrying your own bag and someone's dinner, be grateful. It keeps you honest — and it's the point of the whole thing: the mountain is the show, but the people who live on it are the story.