If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD163.57), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Cascading down a set of terraces overlooking Lake Atitlán, Casa Palopó is a villa-like boutique hotel with colourful, rustic interiors inspired by Guatemalan art and an equally locally flavoured restaurant and bar. Outdoors, a heated pool, lounge spaces and yoga platforms make the most of the hotel’s panoramic hillside perch. Stay in a spacious, art-dotted suite or book the hotel’s villa for exclusive use with a chef and butler, plus an infinity pool of your own. Messing about on the lake is encouraged and the hotel can arrange anything from boat trips to visit outlying villages to tortilla-baking workshops with the chef.
15, including nine suites – three of which are in a villa available for exclusive use.
Check–Out
2pm; earliest check-in, 4pm. Both are flexible, subject to availability.
Prices
Double rooms from £172.90 ($216), including tax at 32 per cent.
More details
Rates include continental breakfast.
Also
Exclusive use of Villa Palopó comes with butler service and a private chef.
At the hotel
Shop (selling local handicrafts and art), gym, outdoor yoga platforms. In rooms: free WiFi, minibar, tea- and coffee-making kit, free bottled water, Makenna bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Although some of the deluxe rooms are on the smaller side, there are no short straws at Casa Palopó: rooms are divided between the original house, a newer annexe and suites in the villa. Smallest of the bunch San Juan stands out for having a bath tub on its private terrace. Rooms in the main house are the most vibrant, with colourful stucco walls, timbered ceilings and terracotta floors. The freshly overhauled master suites at Villa Palopó are easy on the eye and can be booked individually as well as for exclusive use together. In the annexe, deluxe rooms San Andrés and San Rafael are spacious for their category, and we love the light-filled layout of superior San Francisco.
Poolside
A wooden sun deck is edged by cushioned daybeds angled to soak up lake vistas – their backs facing away from a long-but-narrow (heated) lap pool with ladder entry that’s fringed by submerged seats (open 7am–9pm daily). The infinity pool that hogs the camera lens at Casa Palopó is beside the villa (yours exclusively if you so desire) – a mosaic-tiled terraced showstopper with a built-in hot tub; sun loungers cover the terracotta-tiled terrace which, at one end, has a loggia that’s home to lounge chairs beside an outdoor fireplace.
Spa
A treatment room is available for single or couple’s massage therapies. Casa Palopó’s diminutive gym has an exercise bike and two rowing machines; outdoor yoga classes soaking up the serenity of Lake Atitlán can be arranged.
Packing tips
Skew your holiday wardrobe towards swimwear and cover-ups – including kit for lake-based activities – plus your most colourful sundresses and embroidered tops for balmy evenings on the terrace.
Also
The terraced setting for this panoramic hillside hotel means it’s sadly not wheelchair accessible.
Little Smiths aged 10 or older are welcome and an extra bed can be added to some rooms. Deluxe rooms San Andres and San Rafael come with the option of connecting balconies.
Sustainability efforts
Water- and energy-saving measures are in place and the hotel recycles waste. Casa Palopó is engaged in a community project to paint all 850 houses in the village of Santa Catarina Palopó, encouraging tourism and generating a sense of pride for residents. The hotel works with the local community to encourage local families to send their children to school.
One of the corner tables to ensure you’re tucked away from passing service – or a terrace-edge table for the finest lake vistas.
Dress Code
No formal requirements – although a fine knit or shawl can only enhance your ability to linger on the terrace.
Hotel restaurant
At Palopó 6.8 (that’s how far it is from the village in kilometres), the heart of the action is a a panoramic terrace shaded by a woven canopy ribboned with foliage, beneath which diners congregate at wooden tables to enjoy polished plates of Guatemalan cuisine. Chef Manuel Martín del Campo masterminds what’s on offer – updating dishes regularly to make the most of seasonal produce. Comforting mains such as burgers, steak-frites, risotto and pasta are on the menu alongside salads and soups, plus more local delicacies including tuna tartare and a choice of ceviche. Breakfast has an international flavour – eggs benedict or French toast sit alongside fruit platters, yogurt and pastries. Mid-afternoon you can order Guatemalan high tea – a regional take on the English tradition with tea and a cake tier of pastries and bitesize cakes.
Hotel bar
The bar at Casa Palopó sits at one end of the restaurant terrace but in reality blends seamlessly into its convivial space with the same mesmerising lake views. Try a Pata Chucho (dog paw) cocktail made with Zacapa rum.
Last orders
Breakfast is served 7am–11am; lunch, noon–3pm; afternoon tea, 3pm–6pm, and dinner 6pm–9pm.
Room service
A dedicated menu is available to order to your room between 7am and 9pm.
You’ll find Casa Palopó in the hills surrounding Santa Catarina Palopó on the eastern shores of Lake Atitlán in the Guatemalan highlands.
Planes
La Aurora International (Guatemala City) is a three-hour drive from the hotel; private transfers can be booked ahead from $160 each way.
Automobiles
Guests are free to use the private car park at Casa Palopó.
Other
For chopper transfers, there’s a helipad in the grounds.
Worth getting out of bed for
Lago de Atitlán is fecund beauty (we don’t mean to swear…) fringed by fertile farmland and presided over (and enriched) by a trio of majestic volcanoes. Not far from Casa Palopó, Panajachel is the main lakeside town; the hotel can organise guided visits to the surrounding villages and markets. The lake itself is an idyllic spot for kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding or boat trips to visit outlying villages – and its volcanic foothills lend themselves to hiking or bird watching. Back at base, the hotel has a handful of cultural experiences for you to try… Find time for the art of flatbreads at a tortilla workshop with hotel chefs. For an insight into Mayan shamanic traditions, the hotel can arrange a blessing ceremony with a local shaman. Book a private yoga lesson on one of the panoramic platforms dotted around the grounds. Casa Palopó’s ‘tent experience’ thankfully doesn’t involve forgoing your king-size but instead offers you lunch or afternoon tea in their beautifully dressed bell tent with jaw-dropping lake scenery.
Local restaurants
There’s little choice in Santa Catalina Palopó; Panajachel (a 15-minute drive away) is your best bet for finding a café or restaurant away from the hotel – although the quality of cuisine at hotel restaurant 6.8 is hard to top.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this lakeside Guatemalan stay and unpacked their handmade pottery and coffee beans, a full account of their highlands adventure will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Casa Palopó in Lake Atitlán…
With canvas-worthy views from every terrace, it’s not hard to see how two art collectors fell for this picturesque hillside spot and built an idyllic villa overlooking Lake Atitlán. Casa Palopó is now an exclusive boutique stay incorporating the original homestead, a modern annexe and a three-bedroom villa. A series of terraces is landscaped with swimming pools, yoga platforms and dreamy spots for lounging – all designed to soak up breathtaking views of the caldera and the volcanic peaks around its shores. This is a region of Mayan villages, including local Santa Catarina Palopó, where the hotel is working with the community to paint all 850 houses in vibrant colours. The artistic vibes extend to a collection of Guatemalan art displayed across rooms and suites, plus a bijou boutique selling local handicrafts. Take a boat tour to visit an outlying village, rent a paddleboard or kayak for aquatic adventure, or hike among the wooded hillsides around Atlitlán’s shores. Lingering at terrace tables over polished plates of Guatemalan cuisine and working your way through the hotel’s cocktail list is the stuff of blissfully laid-back evenings a casa.
