Guatemala City

Guatemala City wakes each morning to a horizon of volcanoes taking attendance — Agua composed, Pacaya glowing, Fuego exhaling its little cloud as if to prove the country is alive. The capital of the Maya world's doorstep is not the postcard — Antigua hoards those —, but she holds the republic's engine, its best museums and its most honest street life in twenty-two numbered zones.

The sensible traveller walks Zona 1 in the morning: the Palacio's two-tone salons, the cathedral, the Paseo de la Sexta with its restored arcades and shoe-shine philosophers. Midday belongs to the Ixchel and Popol Vuh museums — Maya textiles and jade that reset your eyes — and the evening to Zona 4's converted warehouses or Zona 10's tables. Fuego smokes on cue at dusk.

The Guide's honesty: the city works by zones and so should you — plan each outing to one, taxi or app between them, and downtown by daylight —; Antigua will tempt you at forty-five minutes away, and you should go — but the museums and the real mercado live here; and when Fuego grumbles, locals shrug: learn the shrug before you learn the fear.