24/08/2026
Guatemala had been sitting on my list for years, and Antigua is exactly why.
The arch was built in 1693 so nuns wouldn’t have to touch the street. Santa Catalina convent sat on one side, the school on the other, and the sisters had taken a vow of seclusion. Someone floated just closing the road. Neighbors said absolutely not, that’s our walk to La Merced. So they built a covered bridge over the street with a hidden passage tucked inside. Stand underneath and you’d never guess the corridor is up there.
Four hundred years later the street below is still the best part. Vendors, tuk tuks, kids, everybody stepping into the road at golden hour to line up Volcán de Agua in the opening and hopping back out when a car comes. Strangers taking each other’s photos. Nobody minding. That warmth is what got me.
The transfer from the airport usually takes an hour. Ours took four. Didn’t matter one bit.
We stayed at Casa Santo Domingo, a Dominican convent from the 1500s that the 1773 earthquake flattened. It sat in rubble for two centuries before anyone dug it out. Now it’s a hotel with a chocolate workshop in the old ruins and candles lit down every walkway at night. You pass open crypts on the way to your room and it somehow still feels like the coziest place you’ve ever stayed.
Passed on the volcano this trip. Rainy season, clouds all the way down, no lava to be seen. Totally fine by me. Antigua on its own was more than enough, and this country already has me planning a return.
For anyone chasing this shot, go stand in the middle of 5a Avenida Norte and shoot back toward the volcano. Dead center or it looks crooked. And zoom in. Go wide and Agua shrinks to a bump nobody notices. Mornings are clearer, sunset lights that yellow up. Pick your poison. The road is live so you get about four seconds before a tuk tuk rolls through. Take the shot, hop out, get back in line.
