Guatemala’s volcano tours offer local guides a different path—but at what risk?

My legs were shaking like a bashed-in boxer’s. I’d been hiking all day uphill towards Fuego volcano, weighed down by a backpack, rain-lashed clothes, and the doomy realization that I was the most unfit member of my 35-person tour group.

We’d reached the ‘knife ridge’, a gray, ash-covered natural path a few hundred meters from the boiling lava bowl crater of Fuego, which stands 12,345 feet tall (3,763 meters) and is Central America’s most active volcano. To our right, cloud tops glowed orange as the sun set. In the distance, to our left was an inactive volcano, its wrinkled surface covered in greenery unbothered by lava.

Fuego greeted us with a rumbly boom, then a huge dark mushroom cloud burst from its crater. Selfie sticks were extended, fingers maneuvered into peace signs. As the dark cloud drifted, the sound of rocks thudding against ash mixed with cheers.

A once-in-a-lifetime experience? Or a risk that no-one, least of all local people who work as guides, should be taking?

For me, definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience—I wouldn’t put my lactic acid-drowned knees through that hike again. Many local guides taking groups to Fuego, though, do so thrice weekly, and there are safety concerns about the trips beyond those related to knackered limbs.

Fuego has become more active over the past few decades, and now often erupts hundreds of times each day. And just a few days ago, around 1,000 people were evacuated from communities near Fuego following a particularly strong eruption, with hikers banned from the volcano as it continued to pump smoke around the region. Locals had feared a repeat of a catastrophe in 2018, when ash and rock from Fuego destroyed a town and around 200 people were reported to have died. Residents said the real death toll may be in the thousands.

Soy pays experienced guides 1000 quetzals (USD$130) for each one-and-a-half-day volcano tour—a fee he said was many times the amount they’d get for farm laboring.

Despite the volcano’s deadly recent history, most days hundreds of tourists are taken to Fuego’s knife ridge by local guides working with companies based in the nearby tourist city Antigua.

Elvin Soy was born in San Jose Calderas village, in the shadows of Fuego and its neighbor Acatenango, a volcano similar in size to Fuego that hasn’t erupted since 1972. Soy runs V-Hiking, the company I hiked Fuego with. “When I studied tourism, I had one vision… another option [for locals],” Soy told me. “This community doesn’t have many opportunities for work.”

When he was growing up, it was standard for San Jose Calderas men to work on farms or attempt illegal migration to the US. “People didn’t have money for anything other than eating, and maybe buying one t-shirt,” he said.

In the early 2010s, volcano tours weren’t common in the region, but sometimes travelers would turn up in San Jose Calderas and ask around for guides. Soy said that he and his father would take them up Acatenango and Fuego for free.

By this time, earning a living had become even tougher for many locals. In 2008, US immigration officials raided a meat packing plant in Iowa where migrants from San Jose Calderas worked illegally. Many were deported and returned to the village.

Soy said it’s common for children in San Jose Calderas to leave school aged around 10, with families pressuring them to work. Soy’s family encouraged him to study, however, and he gained tourism qualifications in Antigua. As volcano tourism became more popular, he worked with a local migrants rights group linking villagers with tour companies. In 2019, he formed V-Hiking and he now employs around 20 guides.

There are now at least 20 volcano tour companies working from Antigua, according to Soy. He said that many local volcano tour guides can’t read, and that roles created by these companies offer a “unique way to improve their life”. Soy pays experienced guides 1000 quetzals (USD$130) for each one-and-a-half-day volcano tour—a fee he said was many times the amount they’d get for farm laboring.

Soy said he pays comparatively high fees to get guides with “good behavior”, but you could call it ‘danger money’. On my hike, we slept in cabins at Acatenango volcano’s base camp, watching red lava spew from Fuego through the night.

In 2024, Matthew Watson, Professor of Volcanoes and Climate at the University of Bristol, told BBC News that it was “only a matter of time before someone gets killed” due to an eruption on a Fuego volcano tour. Watson stopped taking students to Fuego in 2015, three years before its eruptions destroyed a nearby town. Danger on the volcanos comes from both extremes of the thermometer—in 2017, six people died of hypothermia when camping on Acatenango.

Some quickly wake from the American dream. Recently, a relative of Soy’s phoned him from the US, asking for a job as a volcano guide and saying: “I really want to come back, because life is hard and I earn $20 a day.”

I asked Soy if being a volcano guide was unavoidably dangerous. “Yes,” he said. “Danger every day. On Fuego, it’s possible that rocks come, and storms, and ash rivers. I think about this danger every day”. He said that Acatenango’s base camp, which offers clear views of Fuego’s peak, “isn’t 100 percent safe… [it’s] like, 99 percent safe”.

Soy’s colleague Laura Bonhomme, a V-Hiking manager, was similarly blunt when asked about Watson’s eruption warning. “I really know it [a tourist tragedy] will happen one day,” she said. Bonhomme showed me photos of rocks near a path close to Fuego’s peak. “These rocks are coming from the volcano. If these touch me [when coming from an eruption], I think it’s… not cool.”

V-Hiking operates on the principle that potential danger to volcano tour guides is justified by life-changing income and job security that’s otherwise out of reach. Soy said that farm laboring locally can pay around 70 quetzals (USD$9) per day. Some locals still try to get to the US for work, paying ‘coyote’ people-smugglers to get them across the Mexico/US border.

Some quickly wake from the American dream. Recently, a relative of Soy’s phoned him from the US, asking for a job as a volcano guide and saying: “I really want to come back, because life is hard and I earn $20 a day.”

On my Fuego hike in January 2025, there was more talk among tourists about Antigua’s best pizzas than there was about danger. I figured that despite Professor Matthew Watson’s concerns, with no recorded tourist deaths from eruptions on Fuego, the chances of me getting in trouble were slim.

On Fuego’s knife ridge, the mood was dreamy, the clothes covering our tired limbs flapping in the wind as we stared at the crater, waiting for the next smoke-belch. The guides took us to base camp as the sun set. As night fell, the lava spewing from Fuego’s crater became visible, firing upwards like red welding sparks, then dribbling down the volcano’s sides and slowly turning black. Soy said the volcano becomes more active at night, so his hikers leaving the knife ridge before nightfall was a safety measure. Some tour groups remained there for the red-glow spectacle.

“Sometimes people see us as ‘old school’ because we’re strict on our rules,” Bonhomme told me. V-Hiking guides are trained to predict Fuego eruption strength, monitoring wind direction, wind, the types of clouds around the volcano, and keeping away from its peak if danger signs appear. Information about volcano activity is also released online by the government agency INSIVUMEH, which has recorded around 50 serious Fuego eruptions since 2015.

At the end of my hike, the guides sang a celebratory song, then politely pointed us towards the tips jar. Some of them, Soy said, would soon head off to squeeze in a few hours of farm laboring before their next tour.

The next evening, they’d be back on Fuego, which seemed to be getting angrier by the day.

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