Chasing Fire: A Volcano Adventure in Guatemala
A cold, chaotic, unforgettable adventure to the summit of Acatenango and the fiery ridge of Fuego.
Some trips test your legs. Others test your patience. This one tested everything.
What started as a quick bargain hunt for the cheapest volcano tour in Antigua turned into one of the most unforgettable nights of my life. A freezing climb, a runaway cloud layer, a pack of strangers, a chocolate muffin, and a sunrise that made every step worth it.
Here is the story...
Sebastian & Sebastian at base camp with Fuego in the Background
Sebastian and I didn’t plan our Acatenango trip with any kind of strategy. We walked around Antigua asking random tour shops how little we could pay to hike two volcanoes in two days, and somehow we found a company in the city center that agreed to take us up for eighty dollars each. The woman behind the counter told us not to mention the price to anyone else in the group, which either meant we got an incredible deal or everyone else got an incredible scam. Hard to say.
If you want more stories and travel tips from Guatemala, explore my Guatemala guide.
We picked a day with the “best possible weather,” even though the forecast showed a chance of rain and our guide warned us, very seriously, never to climb Fuego if there was a single cloud in the sky. That should have been foreshadowing, but the two of us were too excited to care.
The next morning, we met our group:
one Brazilian man in his early forties who didn’t speak English but smiled a lot,
two women from Spain who had been traveling together for more than twenty years,
and our guide, Pollo, who had the enthusiasm of someone who had climbed this mountain hundreds of times and still loved it.
The hike up Acatenango started strong. We were talking, laughing, snacking, feeling like champions… until the trail tilted upward at a ridiculous angle and kept climbing. That’s when I realized this was going to be hard. My legs were burning, my backpack felt heavier by the minute, and the altitude made every breath feel like I had forgotten how lungs work. Even so, we pushed on, passing through forests, dust, ash fields, and clouds rolling over the slopes like moving walls.
By the time we reached base camp, everyone was exhausted. One of the Spanish women decided to save her strength for the sunrise summit, while the other insisted on joining the evening hike to Fuego. That side trip meant descending almost a thousand feet in the cold, losing daylight fast, then climbing back up Fuego’s steep, windy ridge in the dark. She struggled the entire way, which slowed us down and made me pay a little too much attention to safety. Visibility was awful, fog was rolling in, our headlamps were dim, and the air felt colder by the minute.
The clouds rolled over Fuego and we knew we
had made the wrong decision.
We kept going anyway.
By the time we reached the viewpoint on Fuego, we were shaking from the wind and the cold. The clouds stole the lava show we had imagined, but we didn’t even care; Sebastian and I sat down, pulled out our emergency chocolates, and savored them like they were a five–course meal. That moment felt like a victory. Small, silly, perfect.
Back at camp, morale was low. Everyone bundled up inside the hut around a meal of pizza and hot chocolate. As soon as Pollo asked who wanted to attempt the sunrise summit, every hand dropped except mine. The whole group cheered me on anyway, encouraging me to go for it even though they planned to stay warm in their sleeping bags.
At three in the morning, Pollo and I stepped into the cold darkness and began climbing. Hiking Acatenango in daylight is tough. Climbing it in the dark, on volcanic sand that slides backward with every step, is something else entirely. My legs were tired from the day before, but somehow we found a rhythm. We passed group after group, practically racing up the mountainside. Every breath burned, but the excitement kept me moving.
When we reached the summit, the world was still blue and quiet. Then, out of nowhere, a little dog appeared. It trotted over, curled up against me for warmth, and stayed there while the wind tried its best to push us off the ridge. I still don’t know where it came from, but it felt like a tiny mountain guardian keeping us company.
When we reached the summit, the world was still blue and quiet. Then, out of nowhere, a little dog appeared. It trotted over, curled up against me for warmth, and stayed there while the wind tried its best to push us off the ridge. I still don’t know where it came from, but it felt like a tiny mountain guardian keeping us company.
And then the sunrise began.
The sky opened in soft pinks and golds, and in the distance, Fuego exhaled a plume of ash into the morning light. Watching a volcano erupt from above, while sitting next to a stray dog on top of the world, felt unreal. I was exhausted, freezing, and completely alive. It was one of those rare moments when everything stops and you realize exactly where you are and how lucky you are to be there.
The run back down was pure joy. The volcanic sand worked like snow, and Pollo and I practically skied our way to camp, sliding, laughing, falling, and eating dust the whole way down. We made it in twenty minutes. He beat me by a little, but I’m convinced he had home–field advantage.
When I stepped back into camp, the others cheered like I’d returned from a long voyage. And honestly, it felt like I had.
I was tired, sunburned, sore in places I didn’t know existed, but also completely filled with this sense of accomplishment that only comes from pushing yourself past doubt.
Climbing Acatenango and Fuego wasn’t just a hike.
It was a night where the earth breathed fire, the sky opened up, and I learned how alive you can feel when you chase a moment all the way to the top of a mountain.