By Landolfo Mancini 
We were in Arizona recently and tried all the Antelope Canyon excursions, including the two main sections: Upper Canyon and Lower Canyon. This is our full review of Lower Antelope Canyon.
If you haven’t heard of Antelope Canyon before, it’s a narrow passage through the desert with smooth, curving walls of orange and purple sandstone. This room has been shaped by wind and water over many years, leaving behind the beautiful Canyon slot that you can see today.
The important thing is that Antelope Canyon is located in the Navajo Reservation, so, unfortunately, you can visit it only with a tour and a local Navajo guide. However, since this place has become such a popular part of the bucket list these days, the visiting system is basically necessary for crowd control anyway.
Best Trips to the Lower Antelope Canyon
We booked our Lower Antelope Canyon tour with GetYourGuide and had a great experience. The price includes your admission tickets, the Navajo permit fee and a local Navajo guide. Everything has been communicated clearly by email, and they have a refund policy if you need to cancel in advance.
They also offer tours to the Upper Antelope Canyon, Antelope X and some of the more specialized canyons in the same region, which attract fewer visitors than the big canyons.
We have used GetYourGuide for many tours and activities around the world, and they are great. Highly recommended!
Lower Antelope Canyon Review: What To Expect When Visiting
The Lower Antelope Canyon Tour takes you through an underground canyon.
It involves a short sandy walk to get to the slot, then you descend metal stairs, cross the Indian slot at a relaxed pace, and then climb the stairs to return to the starting point.
When we started the tour, they first let us sit and watch a short Navajo tribal dance with music that was included for free as part of our experience. This was an added bonus and gratuities are optional. They didn’t ask us to pay anything.
After watching the Navajo dance, we followed our guide and walked through the desert for about 10 minutes to get to the entrance of the slot. It’s a short walk, but the heat can be intense. The sooner you enter the slot, the better, because the temperatures are much cooler!
Before you enter Antelope Canyon, it looks like nothing from above, just a crack in the ground, but as soon as you enter, you will be blown away by the perfectly smooth, wavy walls and colorful sandstone.
This place is as beautiful as in the photos. Our Navajo guide pointed out a number of different funny shapes in the canyon walls, including a dragon, an eagle and a tribal leader.
Taking pictures in the canyon is not as difficult as you might think, and even phones work well here. A wide-angle lens is usually the most suitable for capturing most of the details.
For the sake of full disclosure, I must say that the tours to the Lower Antelope Canyon are always crowded. Very crowded. There is no way to escape, unless you go out of season, and even then you have no guarantees. More about that after.
Despite the crowds, we could still enjoy the scenery and everything we saw. We spent almost an hour in the slit canyon and took a lot of great photos without others, so it didn’t ruin the experience for us.
In the same week we also visited the Upper Antelope Canyon, and it was much more hectic and hectic than the Lower Canyon, so we could hardly take pictures. Overall, the lower canyon was a much better experience for us.
Best Time To Visit Lower Antelope Canyon
The best time to visit Lower Antelope Canyon really depends on what you are looking for. If you want to avoid the crowds and the heat, the best time to travel is from November to March. However, the most spectacular lighting is probably in the summer months.
Compared to the upper canyon, this one has a wider ceiling and receives much more ambient light from the sun, which means that it can actually get very bright indoors — possibly too bright for ideal photos.
This means that the best time of day to visit the Lower Canyon is in the morning or after afternoon, when there is not too much light and contrast in the canyon.
However, we were in Lower Antelope in the middle of the day and I must say that most of the parts of the canyon were still very beautiful even at that time, so do not completely cancel a lunch tour. If you are not a professional photographer, you may not really notice the difference.
Is The visit worth it?
Yes, the lower canyon is definitely worth it for the sights and landscapes, even if the crowds soften the experience a little. It is without a doubt one of the most unique and beautiful slot canyons in the United States.
The price of the tour is not exactly inexpensive, but still a little affordable than the Upper Antelope canyon, which can cost up to per person in the summer season. Lower Canyon is also a better value for money overall, as the tour is not so rushed.