Index of Subjects: Every Place and Topic Covered on This Site
Everything covered here, grouped by country. Each entry links to the full page; the note beside it is the one fact that most often decides whether the place fits a trip.
Guatemala
- Acatenango Chimaltenango, Guatemala Summit: 3,976 m
An overnight climb to nearly 4,000 m above Antigua, camped on a ridge facing Volcán de Fuego, which erupts through the night in full view.
- Antigua Guatemala Sacatepéquez, Guatemala Founded: 1543
Colonial capital from 1543 until the 1773 earthquakes moved the government away, and the abandonment is exactly why the townscape survives: ruined convents left standing where a working capital would have cleared them.
- Chichicastenango market Quiché, Guatemala Days: Thu · Sun
Twice a week the K'iche' town fills its plaza and the steps of Santo Tomás, and most of what changes hands is still for the towns around it rather than for visitors.
- Lake Atitlán Sololá, Guatemala Elevation: 1,562 m
A flooded caldera ringed by three volcanoes, with a dozen towns around the shore that differ in dress, dialect and trade. The launches, not the roads, are the real network.
- Mayan ruins Petén, Izabal and the wider Maya area Tallest: Tikal, Temple IV
Sites are not interchangeable: one is the tallest, one is the most finely carved, one is empty of visitors, and choosing badly wastes a day and a long drive.
- Pacaya volcano Escuintla, Guatemala Summit: 2,552 m
The accessible volcano: a half-day round trip from Antigua onto ground that was liquid within living memory, and the one climb in Guatemala that does not require a night on a mountain.
- Semuc Champey Alta Verapaz, Guatemala Bridge: ≈300 m
A 300-metre limestone bridge carrying a staircase of pools, with the Cahabón running underneath it through the rock. The K'anba caves are the same karst and the same day.
- Traje: Highland Maya dress Western Highlands, Guatemala Loom: backstrap
Traditional dress is still worn daily in the Guatemalan highlands, and it is village-specific: the huipil of Nebaj is not the huipil of Todos Santos. Twenty-two Mayan languages, dozens of towns, and a cloth that says which one before anyone speaks.
Venezuela
- Angel Falls Canaima, Venezuela Total drop: ≈979 m
979 metres off the flank of Auyán-tepui, most of it turning to mist on the way down. The approach is by river, and the river only carries boats in the wet season, so the season is the first decision.
- Mount Roraima Gran Sabana, Venezuela Summit: 2,810 m
The highest of the tepuis, standing on the Venezuela-Brazil-Guyana border, and the mountain behind Conan Doyle's Lost World. Non-technical but sustained: a walk-up with no climbing and no easy days.
Peru
- Inca architecture Cusco and the Sacred Valley, Peru Mortar: none
Walls built without mortar, without iron tools and without wheels, fitted closely enough that they have outlasted every colonial building put on top of them.
- Q'eswachaka rope bridge Canas, Cusco region, Peru Span: ≈28 m
The last surviving Inka suspension bridge, cut down and rebuilt from twisted grass every June by the four communities that have always maintained it.
- The fountains of Machu Picchu Machu Picchu, Cusco region, Peru Fountains: 16
Sixteen stone basins fed by a single spring through a canal cut across the mountainside, dropping through the site in order of precedence, and still running.
- The Inca Trail Cusco region, Peru Length: ≈43 km
Four days on a paved Inka road over two passes, ending at the Sun Gate. Permit-capped, sold out months ahead, and closed every February.
Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador
- Copán Copán, Honduras Stairway: ≈2,200 glyphs
Small, dense and carved more finely than any other Maya site, the result of a soft volcanic tuff that took three-dimensional relief where limestone could not.
- Galápagos animals Galápagos, Ecuador Waved albatross: Apr–Dec
The animals are the reason to go and they are not evenly distributed: most species are tied to particular islands, and several are tied to particular months. What lives there, where it actually is, and what a visit is allowed to do.
About this index
How is this site organised?
By subject, not by trip. Each page covers one place or one topic (a mountain, a market, a weaving tradition, a piece of engineering) and answers the same four questions: what it is, where it sits, what reaching it involves, and when that is possible. The country pages group those subjects and add the regional practicalities that apply across them.
What does the check date at the bottom of a page mean?
It is the date the changeable figures on that page were last verified: park fees, permit rules, guide requirements, seasons and road conditions. Durable facts such as an altitude, a founding date or how a loom works do not carry a date, because they do not move.
Why are some countries covered more thinly than others?
Coverage follows where the practicalities are hardest to work out from a distance. The Guatemalan highlands, the tepui country of south-eastern Venezuela and the Inka sierra of Peru are treated in depth; the neighbouring countries appear where they connect to those rather than as complete guides.
What if a place is not listed here?
Then it is not covered yet. This is a reference to specific subjects rather than an attempt at a complete gazetteer, and a missing entry is a gap rather than a judgement.
Can the information here be corrected?
Yes, and corrections to changeable conditions are the most useful kind. The corrections page explains what makes a correction usable, mainly saying when you were there.