Fuego is one of the most continuously active volcanoes in Central America, and the view from Acatenango's upper slopes is one of the few places on earth where a person can stand at eye level with an erupting summit. Fuego has been in near-constant eruption in various forms for decades, and major activity has been recorded going back centuries in colonial-era accounts. The two volcanoes share a highland massif that has long held deep significance for the Indigenous Kaqchikel and K'iche' Maya peoples of the surrounding region.

The clearest conditions and the most dramatic contrast between the ash plume and the sky tend to come during the dry season, roughly November through April, when morning light catches the smoke early and the cloud sea below settles at its most photogenic.