Itinerary
Guam: Rent the Car for Days, Not the Whole Trip
A Guam trip rarely needs more than one base: the hotels are in Tumon, and the airport, the malls and the capital are all a short ride away. The planning question is therefore not where to stay but which days to spend outside the resort strip — and on Guam, those days are set less by distance than by a calendar of opening days, weekly markets and village feasts.
Updated 2026-09-19
Why the car is a per-day decision
Tumon, the shopping centres and Hagåtña are tied together by the island's trolleys, public buses and taxis, so days spent on the beach, in the stores or in the capital need no car at all. The villages of the south and the wildlife refuge at the island's northern tip lie beyond the trolley routes and are far easier by car, and those are the days worth renting for. Planning the trip as a few car days inside a stay, rather than as one long rental, keeps the car where it earns its keep — the ways of getting around the rest of the time are simple.
The south: one full day, taken slowly
The south is where Guam stops looking like a resort island. On the southwest coast, Umatac's bay is the place where Magellan's landfall of March 1521 is traditionally placed, marked by an obelisk, and above it stands Fort Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, the last still standing of four forts built to guard a bay where galleons crossing the Pacific put in for supplies. The Cetti Bay overlook is in the same village, and the south also holds Mount Lamlam, the island's highest point at 1,332 feet (406 metres) — modest above sea level, though measured from the floor of the nearby Mariana Trench it rises nearly 11 kilometres. A trail climbs to its summit.
Around the southern tip, Inarajan's natural pools are saltwater swimming holes sheltered by the reef beside the village, and the Gef Pa'go Chamorro cultural village is close by; inland, Talofofo Falls is one of the island's most popular waterfalls. Taken with stops, the loop fills a day, and the war-history units on the west coast sit on the way out or back.
The north: Ritidian, on the right day
The Ritidian unit of the Guam National Wildlife Refuge, at the island's northern tip, has a white-sand beach, a nature centre and walking trails, and it opens only part of the week — it also closes when ocean conditions are hazardous. Two of its walks, to a cave with pictographs and through an ancient latte village, run only as scheduled tours. That makes Ritidian the one outing on Guam to book around rather than slot in: check the refuge's current opening days and tour times first, and give it a morning with the car.
Fix the calendar first, then the car
Three things on Guam happen on set days, and they are worth pinning down before anything else. Ritidian keeps its own opening days; the Chamorro Village night market in Hagåtña is on Wednesday evenings; and each village celebrates its patron saint on its own date, with a procession and a fiesta table visitors are welcome to join. Put those on the calendar, add a clear-weather day for the south, and the car days fall into place around them — with the beach days in between needing nothing more than a trolley ride.