Guatemala

Guatemala is where the Mayan world remains a living culture rather than a museum exhibit. In highland markets like Chichicastenango, textiles blaze in colours each village can read like a signature, and ceremonies blend Catholic saints with far older gods on the same church steps. Lake Atitlán may be the most beautiful lake on the continent, a volcano-ringed caldera where each shoreline village keeps its own character and boutique hotels hide in the coffee slopes. Antigua, the old colonial capital, arranges cobbles, ruins and rooftop bars beneath three volcanoes, one of which obligingly puffs smoke for your photographs. Then Tikal: temple pyramids bursting through rainforest canopy, howler monkeys roaring at dawn, and the sense of standing inside a lost world that never quite got lost. Guatemala is vivid, profound and criminally overlooked.