10 Best Hotels in Las Verapaces, Guatemala

This hotel in a century-old house offers great in-town value and gives old Cobán standby La Posada some competition. The building is constructed, colonial-style, around a lovely garden. Rooms contain two queen-size beds, tile floors, huge bathrooms, and lots of wrought iron. Enjoy the evenings on the chairs outside your room on the wide veranda lining the perimeter of the garden. Top it all off with a knowledgeable owner, and you have one of our favorite lodgings in the area. The restaurant serves local cuisine and is open daily except Monday.

True charm pervades La Posada, a lovely colonial home overlooking Cobán's central plaza, which the current owner's grandmother opened as a hotel in 1939. Rooms have wooden floors and exposed beams and are furnished with antiques. Some have special touches like wardrobes and writing desks, and three have fireplaces. Painted blue chairs and cloth hammocks fill the porch overlooking the pretty garden. In the reception area is a Ping-Pong table, which is popular with families. Request a room away from the street if you're bothered by traffic noise. A cozy restaurant with a fireplace serves international as well as Guatemalan favorites.

The owners of El Bistro also run a small, clean, and exceptionally inexpensive hostel next door. Lining a long first-floor corridor, the rooms have either double or bunk beds; all have shared baths.

If your tastes run toward the simple, then this modestly furnished backpackers' hostel near the center of Cobán makes for a good budget find. Three of the six rooms are for one or two people; the other three have bunk beds and can sleep up to four; bathrooms are shared. Plenty of hammocks are hanging out in the garden and are nice to come back to at the end of a long day. The proprietors also run Cobán Travels tour company.

The rustic Doña Victoria was built as a convent more than 400 years ago. It's filled with charming antiques; rocking chairs and overstuffed couches line the wide stone porch encircling the patio, which is also graced with an old stone well. Rooms are spacious and have beds piled high with blankets for the cold Cobán nights.

This large wooden hotel at the mouth of the Grutas is a good choice for budget travelers. There are sparsely furnished single and double rooms as well as several stone-and-concrete cabañas out back. Some rooms share a bathroom. There's also space for camping. The restaurant serves decent Guatemalan fare.

This centrally located hotel is popular with Guatemalan business travelers, who appreciate its unusual combination of convenience and tranquillity, thanks to its position on a quiet street one (uphill) block away from the main square. The spotless rooms are simply furnished, with one double bed. Next door is a small coffee roasting plant (owned by the same family), which fills the air with a delightful scent.

You start seeing the signs advertising this hotel on the Atlantic Highway as you leave Guatemala City, and long before you get here you've memorized the name and location. The place, a few kilometers south of Cobán, is huge, and in that regard very un-Verapaces-like, humming with all the activity—gym, shops, playground, meeting rooms—of a hotel that bills itself as a "resort and conference center." Rooms are scattered around the lush grounds; some have fireplaces. The hotel has a lot of amenities and is a good value.

We like the one- and two-bedroom cabins in this roadside lodging near the Biotopo del Quetzal. All are set back from the road and can accommodate four to eight people. Each has a much-appreciated fireplace with ample wood supply for those chilly nights, of which there are many up here, making them much cozier than the simply furnished, stucco-wall, brick-floor rooms in the main building closer to the highway. The Posada operates its own small nature reserve; it's ideal for short hikes and is full of orchids, including the region's famed monja blanca.

Resembling little treehouse temples, the Ram Tzul's funky cabins have rustic log-stump floors and pitched pine and cedar ceilings—and terrific views of the surrounding private nature reserve. The octagonal stained-glass windows are a little incongruous, but the bamboo furniture and studied rusticity more than make up for them. The hotel has its own trail that leads to a magnificent 60-meter (197-foot) waterfall, which is worth the visit even if you're not a guest.