“Guatemala is everything. If you're looking for answers, go see a shaman.”
Where the trip started
Every country in this atlas is a stop on a journey that, in a couple of weeks, will have lasted five years without a break. Guatemala is where it started, and Mike Boisvert did not see any of it coming. He flew in on a round-trip ticket with one month planned, to reset from too much partying and too many bar shifts back in Québec. He did not even bring a board. “My goal was not to travel to 100 countries and create a YouTube channel. Back then, I had no idea all this was coming.” He bought a skateboard on the spot, ended up in Antigua, and never used the return half of the ticket. “This place changed my life forever.”
A country that skates, with very little to skate on
The scene here is small, smaller than in neighbouring El Salvador, and it lives in the capital. Guatemala City is where the skate street is, where the events happen and where the one real shop, Jungle Skateshop, has been running things since 1997. “They're running the scene in the country.” Mike passed through the capital twice and never skated it; it felt heavy to him at the time, in the first weeks of a first solo trip. That is the one regret of his month here, and the reason he plans to go back. “Next time I'll go. I'm not scared anymore.”
Where he did skate was Antigua, and Antigua has no business having skaters at all. The whole town is cobblestone, there are no sidewalks, and it sits between three volcanoes in one of the most historic towns in Central America. Yet there is one basketball court, and every night twenty skaters show up with rails and ledges they bring in themselves. Mike was there almost every day. “It was cool back then because I didn't really care about filming. I was just chilling, and I was getting better for some reason.” It is still his pick for the best place to skate in the country.
Since his visit Antigua got a real skatepark, about a year old now, concrete with a volcano behind it. Mike has only seen the footage, and from the footage he calls it the best park in Guatemala, with one caveat that applies across Central America: municipal concrete does not age well, so go before it does. On the maps he flagged for the return trip: Parque San Pedrito, a smooth street plaza in the centre of the capital, the bowl at Parque Municipal José Chakra, and Parque Extremo Tanque del Soldado in Quetzaltenango, reportedly the biggest park in the country, still to be confirmed with someone who has skated it. Out at Lake Atitlán he also found a mini ramp in a village where nobody skates, absurdly steep and somehow rideable. “I was really surprised to find something to skate there.” He has no idea who built it or whether it still stands.
Skaters to know
The one Mike actually skated with is Carlos SB (@carlossb_and_son), the OG of Antigua, who runs a tattoo shop in town and was at the court most nights. “He's a local legend. He was really good.” Carlos only skates Antigua, which tells you what the court means to the place. From the capital, the names Mike has lined up for when he goes back: David Fernandez (@the_leavesfalling), his pick, Leo Zelada (@leoozelada_) and Dany Rodriguez (@danyrodriguez3739), who seems to be the main guy in Guatemala City. Mike has not skated with the three of them yet, and says so. The country is not short of talent; it is short of parks, and his answer to what would actually help is the same one he gives for most of Central America: a Golden Ticket.
The shaman on Facebook
This is the story Mike has told on podcasts and still tells the same way. Somewhere around Lake Atitlán, on his first solo trip anywhere, he typed “healer” and the name of the town into Google. Google gave him a Facebook profile. He messaged it. An Indian man with long hair told him to meet at a place called Eagle's Nest in San Marcos La Laguna, then told him to write down every single one of his problems, all of them, fold the paper and hand it over. “I wrote three pages of problems. Then I realised: oh, I have a lot of problems.” The shaman laid him on the floor, put his hands on him and hummed for thirty minutes while Mike, who does not consider himself spiritual, fought as hard as he could not to laugh. At the end he reached for his wallet. The man refused the money. “He said: no, no. You have to help the next person.”
The next day Mike called his girlfriend of four years in Canada and told her he was not coming back. He never saw her again. He also never stopped travelling. “I don't really believe in this stuff, and I still don't. But at least you do some introspection.” The “help the next person” part he took literally, eventually: he counts the JACKALOPE Golden Tickets he has handed out on the road as the most life-changing thing he has been part of, starting with Kenji in Thailand, for whom it was the biggest trip of his life. He told the same story on The Nine Club; the clip below starts there.
If you go
Mike spent a month in Guatemala and hit about ten towns, almost none of them for skateboarding, and he still calls it one of the best countries to backpack. Antigua is the base: colonial, colourful, between volcanoes, with a skate session waiting at the court after dark. Acatenango is the hike, eight hours up, a night at the top, and Fuego across the valley erupting every half hour or so, which makes it the one volcano where you are close to guaranteed to see lava. “It's still my biggest hike ever done.” Fuego had a major eruption in August 2026, so check conditions before you commit. Lake Atitlán is where he says you have to go: the deepest lake in Central America, a ring of villages that each feel like a different country, volcanoes all around, and a Maya town somewhere under the surface that divers still visit. Guatemala also has one of the largest Indigenous populations in Central America, and you feel that everywhere outside the capital.
His summary is honest: “Maybe not the best for skating, but for the rest, it's incredible.”
Photos and video: Mike Boisvert / The Skate Nomad. Part of the JACKALOPE Skate Atlas, one country at a time, with the skaters who live there. See every country on the map.
