Climbing Acatenango with Wicho and Charlie's

Climbing Acatenango was one of the best things we did in 7 months of travelling. This is an absolute must do if you’re visiting Guatemala.

The hike itself is very challenging, but so so worth it. It is about 4 hours of relentless uphill hiking of around 1,570m of ascent in total, up to just under 4000m above sea level. This is in altitude sickness territory as > 2,500m above sea level. It also includes walking on fairly slippy volcanic ash throughout. That being said, it is totally doable! Walking boots are an absolute must (we bought some from the market in Antigua) and so are hiking sticks.

To give you some reference on fitness, I (Rachel) have done Snowdon in Wales a couple of times and a few other smaller mountains, including hiking in Patagonia, however found it definitely doable.

This is not medical advice, but we took altitude sickness tablets to help with any altitude sickness we may have got, however got really annoying side effects including buzzing in the hands and face, which meant that we wish we hadn’t to be honest!

This is not an ad, but we definitely recommend doing Acatenango with Wicho and Charlie's. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that it is honestly a must!

These are the reasons:

1. Sleeping cabins - they are the only company that do sleeping cabins as opposed to tents, which, at a this high an altitude after a day of hiking, is honestly compulsory. It is so cold up there, I couldn’t have stayed in a tent! The cabins were comfy and warm, with sleeping bags provided and lots of blankets for layers.

   
   

2. They carry your big bag 80% of the way up the mountain, and you can pay for a porter to carry up the last 20% of the way. This means that you only need to carry your day pack with your lunch, snacks, water and an extra layer that you need for the day, rather than absolutely everything!

   
   

3. Delicious food - I’m not even a vegan, but I really enjoyed the vegan food (it also felt safer eating vegan on a mountain than risking food poisoning from meat!), they give you a delicious breakfast before you leave for the hike, lunch and snacks for hiking, a delicious cooked dinner on the mountain, hot cacao and marshmallows, and breakfast the following day

   
   

4. Borrowing gear - this is a big one as for us, travelling for 7 months, we had next to no hiking gear on us. They have got a huge shop with things that you can borrow (you just go in on the morning you are leaving) including lots of jackets which are all free, backpacks, water bottles and filtered water, hats, gloves, lights. You can rent hiking sticks, portable chargers and lots of other things too!

   
   

5. They have the best views from their base camp, as it is at the top of the camping area on the volcano!

   
   

6. Store your luggage onsite in their secure locker room and save on a hotel cost for the night!

   
   

Structure of the day:

• 7am - meet at Wicho and Charlie, breakfast, borrow any gear needed and pack bag.

• 8:30am - travel to the volcano

• 10:00am - start hike

• By 4pm - arrive at base camp

• Optional fuego hike (we did not do this and did not find it necessary, since you can see the volcanic eruptions of fuego from base camp on acatenango)

• 6:30pm - hot cocao and marshmallows

• 7:30pm - dinner

• 8pm - watch volcanic eruptions from fuego!

• 9pm - sleep (or whenever you fancy to be honest!)

  
  

  Next day:

• 4am sunrise - you can hike to the summit to watch sunrise, leaving at 3:30am (c1 hour hike). Cam did this and Rach didn’t; but sunrise was still beautiful from base camp!

• 7am breakfast

• 7:30 descent

• 12pm arrive back to coach

• 1:30pm back to Wicho and Charlie and lunch!