Beautiful, incredibly special and a sunrise I will never forget. The Nariz del Indio is a mountain on Lago Atitlán that most people hike, unlike other volcanoes or mountains, to see the sunrise from the top. And honestly? Beautiful. Plus, if I leave my personal opinion aside, as stunning as the view from Volcán San Pedro. Just a completely different experience.

To see the sunrise over Lago Atitlán from Nariz del Indio, you have to a) get a guide who will lead you up the mountain in complete darkness with torches, and b) this guide must have a contact who will let you hike the mountain. Because as far as I understood, part of the route goes through private property. But I mean of course you don’t have to find the contact person yourself. Besides that I would definitely not recommend going up alone, because you get driven by car to the foot of the mountain at night and then walk up in complete darkness. Depending on whether it has rained or not, the path up is slippery and muddy, difficulty level though still being normal. I will admit though that after Volcán San Pedro everything seemed easy to me… 😀

Once at the top, the ‘viewpoint’ itself is in complete darkness, and when I got there, everything around us was completely foggy. Like at first you could hardly see anything except a thick white and fluffy wall to the left and right and thick fog ahead. Thankfully, there is a fairly long and angular bench where you can chill out and wait until the sun starts to rise.
When it started, everything awakened very slowly, a little like in slow motion. At first, everything was still quite foggy, and there was this blue-purple glow of dawn above everything. Then it got brighter and brighter and changed to pink, red and orange until finally the sun rose behind the mountains. It was very special and incredibly beautiful. Simply magical.
Of course, we all took photos and some also filmed the entire sunrise. To our right, a village at the foot of Nariz del Indio slowly awoke with the dawn, while to our left, the fog and clouds continued to recede. And straight ahead, the sun slowly worked its way up behind the mountain, rose and hung above the water like a white ball, turning the water blue and the mountains and hills green again. It was truly beautiful and we had perfect conditions for a magical moment.
And at sunrise, everyone got a cup of coffee 😊
On the way down, I could finally see that we had been walking through a lot of cornfields and that the ground was actually quite muddy and even quite slippery in some places. Back at the hostel, I was just happy to have been so lucky with the weather 😊

Yes or no? One hundred percent yes. The sunrise from Nariz del Indio, as well as the hike up Volcán San Pedro, is the most beautiful and amazing thing you can do at Lago Atitlán. Both are beautiful, completely unique and simply experiences that I will never forget.