Guatemala Customer Reviews

Antigua: the hotel was perfect, very comfortable, perfect location, great food, lovely pool. The market tour was a great intro to Guatemala food and culture and then the cooking class was great fun. We took a chicken bus to get there, an extra bonus for the kids. It’s really well run and the kids loved preparing all the food. Highly recommend!

Antigua walking tour:  David was great and it was really interesting. It’s a long, hot morning but he kept the kids interested throughout and we all fell into the pool after!

Pacaya Volcano: This was great fun and not very strenuous.

Lake Atitlan: the hotel here was so beautiful, much more than I expected, the gardens are stunning and the birds and the views were really beautiful. We wish we could have stayed longer! The kayaking was fun and quite tiring!

Flores/Tikal: You were absolutely right, a short night in a lodge rather than more travel to La Lancha was perfect. It was dark when we arrived and only just light when we left the next morning! And great to be on site. Waking up to monkeys shrieking in the trees next to us was very cool. The ginormous spider in the bathroom less cool but entertained the kids and you can’t get one without the other! Our guide around Tikal was fantastic and we loved it. We probably took a bit too long exploring all the ruins and all the animals/birds/trees and got to the next lodge quite late. But that was gorgeous. The staff are incredible, the hotel is beautiful. So sensitive to the environment and every detail has been considered. You won’t find a single piece of plastic there, and where possible – I would say 99% of the time – everything has come directly from nature. Our villa here was in a stunning spot over looking the river, so the kids could choose to swim in the river or pool – same temperature!

A quick shout out to Gregory, our driver in Belize – the most charming, entertaining, informative man! He had the kids hanging on every word and the journey flew by!

ATM Caves: I’m not sure I was totally prepared for how adventurous the caves are – my kids certainly weren’t! It turns out our 10 year old doesn’t love tight spaces – oops! But even she said it was the most fun thing we did! We all absolutely loved it. The caves are incredible and the history is fascinating. Our guide got the measure of the kids thirst for adventure so we took an extra adventurous tight route out of the caves and then swam down the river to get back to the lunch and bus home – so fun! The kit for this trip is really important and your notes were really helpful. It’s rare these days to not be able to bring a camera or phone, but it’s all the better for it so you can really focus and enjoy every moment.

Final stop was amazing, the staff again were great, the food was really good, and it was the ideal stop and rest after a very busy 10 days! The snorkelling trip was another highlight – I’ll never forget my 14 year and 10 year old daughters coming face to face with a 6 foot nurse shark while more nurse sharks and sting rays swam below them!

All in all, the trip of a lifetime, we all loved it! Thank you so much for all the hard work putting it all together for us.

We had a chat about feedback on the final night and their thoughts were:

Best hotel – both Atitlan and Placencia. We all loved the hotel in Antigua but would have really loved a hotel with a pool, we were quite jet lagged and it was quite full on being in a city (esp for H at 11). The hotel was great but there was nowhere to sit apart from your bed as all the tables outside were wooden – small thing but it was just so beautiful but hard to relax when jet lagged. A pool would have been good.

Activities – loved them all, funnily enough, esp the day at the markets in Atitlan. Kayaking was great but soo windy on the way back. We did jumping into the lake from a rock which was fab.  Loved the hike along the shore of the lake. We enjoyed the volcano, but it was probably the one the kids said they would have missed as it was a long driving day. If we’d had enough time, that would have been good on its own day, come back to a pool in Antigua and then Atitlan the following day – but obvs we were pushed for time. Cave was great – a bit too much on the tour guide’s explanation of Mayan sacrifice etc

Guiding – in an ideal world it would be good to chose guides for either A – those who are interested in a lot of details B – those who have kids and want the speedy version! I think sometimes we felt all the guides told us too much and we could have done with option B!! Esp at Tikal. I did let him know we’d need the short version but I appreciate they want to share their knowledge!

Snorkelling was great – saw a turtle which was fab – did 3 snorkel zones so it was quite a lot – all great.

All transfers were punctual and air con and easy. Pick-up in Jade was not until 11.30am and we were keen to leave at 9am but they couldn’t do that. Instead, we went tubing down the river which was loved so it worked out well.

Had a hysterical night out dancing (more like grinding) in the town in Atitlan with the girls. Met lots of people and had a great night. Definitely worth it.

We were all ready to come home at the end of 2 weeks. I had been keen to go for 3 weeks, but I think it’s pretty full on for the kids. We were all pretty healthy.

Kids all loved it which was great –  our eldest can be pretty hard to please and even she kept saying it was great!

A HUGE thank you again. We really did love it.

My feedback for other families is that this trip is a unique, fantastic experience for the whole family. From canoeing across lakes and snorkelling with turtles and manta rays to climbing ruins and making tamales – every activity was an adventure we all loved. Everyone in Belize was so friendly and the food was amazing!

My only advice: make sure to pack spray, long trousers and sleeves for the places that have mosquitos after the rain… we underestimated how many to bring… and make sure to book some time for relaxing – because though we loved all our activities, everywhere was so amazing, it was wonderful to just soak up the atmosphere in each place too (and have a few lie-ins!! ).

I was a little nervous about rainy season – but it never stopped us from our activities, and I think took some of the extreme heat out of the trip (not sure we could have taken much hotter on the jungle days!!).

Please feel free to include this feedback on your website. We look forward to future trips with you!!

Belize was quite the contrast to Guatemala, but also very lovely. Probably my highlight of the whole tour was a property tour where we swam in several pools in the jungle, it was very special. They also laid out a private lunch by one of the pools, so special.  

I mentioned our first guide in particular, but actually, the guides across the whole trip were excellent as were all the drivers and connections etc – we didn’t have any trouble and I hadn’t appreciated in advance how much more relaxing it would be having everything arranged in advance and not worrying about the various logistics, it made it very relaxing for us.

So all in all a fantastic trip. It won’t be out last (it’s reignited our urge to travel and has sparked something in the kids too), so I suspect we’ll be in contact again for next time, though we might need to wait 2 years until after GCSEs.

Many thanks again.

Our driver, Juan Carlos, was ace too – especially arriving at night in a strange city, he made us feel immediately at home, with his fluent English and very well-appointed van (with a snack box, which the children appreciated greatly!) They set the pretty high for Carlos (our guide in Flores), but he too was excellent. He was excellent both on the archaeology and the wildlife of the Mayan sites (he could spot and tell us about animals we wouldn’t have even known were there, were it not for his keen eyes and helpful laser pen!)

I don’t think there was anything we would have changed – it was all fantastic!

So this is our third trip (or four if you count the Covid cancellation) with you and on every trip we have been blown away with our experiences – hence coming back – and we will be back again! The itineraries look amazing and the trips are way more exciting than the itineraries.

Read more on our Belize Customer Reviews page.