Lake Atitlan in Guatemala — the 1.8-million-year-old 600-meter-deep volcanic lake located a couple hours from Guatemala City — is usually the highlight of anyone’s trip to the country, with its picturesque volcanoes towering over the lake, the small villages clustered along the shorelines and the chocolate shaman who seek spiritual enlightenment in cups [...]

The mist smells of banana leaves and wood smoke, the scent of the Guatemalan highlands when it rains. Mothers carry firewood on their heads and get knocked around by a downpour that’s like bowls of dirty water being thrown from the sky. Village children in hand-woven clothes hide under a [...]

In the current presidential election there is a lot of talk about safety nets. Without being political, I’ll say that the most in the developed world have them, and they tend to be pretty effective overall. In the third world, these nets often don’t exist, or are filled with human-sized [...]

This week I and TheExpeditioner Managing Editor Luke Armstrong sat down (virtually) with writer/Korean podcaster QiRanger (aka Steve Miller) to chat about travel in Guatemala, which you can here in the above clip. There is a discussion of what to eat while there, the best ways to travel about the country [...]

In this travel video guide to Guatemala, I head down to Guatemala and explore scenic Antigua, hike Volcano Pacaya, take a road trip to Lake Atitlan (and ride a horse along its banks), then head north to Tikal, home to the capital of the once mighty Mayan Empire, where I [...]

“Hop on! Just make sure you don’t burn your leg on the exhaust.” I straddled the back third of the scooter seat behind my newfound gringo and gringa companions, Luke and Leta, and started looking for a bar or something to grab onto. “Put your hands around my waist, no [...]

At 12,336 feet, Volcán de Agua towers over Antigua, which was once the capital of the country until 1773 when a massive earthquake struck destroying much of the country. Antigua’s population is only about 30,000 people, but during the height of the tourist season that number swells to over 60,000, many of [...]

What would Che say? Perspiring at a rate that suggests total disintegration is imminent, the police officer wiped another sweat globule from his a forehead. “Where are your papers?” he asks. With nostrils floating in a sea of rubbery flesh, shirt buttons straining against a bloated paunch, the overall impression [...]

Warning, if you enjoy reading about Mormons being mauled by lions, then keep reading . . . For those of you who follow my Expeditioner posts (Thanks Mom, Dad and Roberta*)  you may have noticed that my last two posts hinged upon a lion that mysteriously showed up in my [...]

“They are taking the lion to the vet, because he is sick. He is merely sick.” “We are taking the lion to live in the zoo in Guatemala City because they have kept him in inhumane conditions.” “They are taking the lion because they have a court order to take [...]