Antigua

City overview

Guatemala packs volcanoes, Maya cities and colonial streets into a country you can cross in a day. Antigua's cobbled centre sits beneath three volcanoes, Lake Atitlan fills a crater ringed by Maya villages, and Tikal's temples rise out of the Peten rainforest. The Jewish community numbers under a thousand people, almost all of them in Guatemala City, where an Orthodox congregation and a Sephardi society have both been established for a century. Three Chabad houses serve travellers - one in the capital, one in Antigua and one on the shore of Lake Atitlan - and each of them cooks. Kosher food, Shabbos meals and a minyan are all reachable on the standard Guatemala route.