The hacienda tour and the hotel itself were nice. The dinner option was a four-course meal which was always really nice, but the kids can’t eat that much so it would have been good to have smaller portions for them.

When we got back to Mexico City the weather had changed was perfect and it was nice to be able to walk around. I feel like I start all my sentences with I love. Another one! We loved the tours in Mexico City. The Aztec ruins were great, the food tour was amazing. The Frida Khalo Museum and Xochmillio were interesting. Not sure the kids got much out of the museum, but they loved the markets.

Overall, the whole trip was a great balance of activities and relaxing. The kids loved the activities and finding a pool at every hotel. We’re already trying to decide where next!

The itinerary was excellent and gave us a wonderful variety of things to do and places to see. The trip to Celestun was a great add-on, and would be a must-do in flamingo season: we saw lots of other birds, as well as baby stingrays. It would be quite reasonable to miss out Merida in my opinion: it doesn’t really have anything special to offer that you haven’t already seen in Valladolid / Izamal.

Valladolid has a renovated house (Casa de los Venados) that is stuffed full of Mexican art and is well worth visiting. The Cenote in Valladolid is currently closed, as are the caves at Loltun. Chitzen Itza is incredibly busy which mars the experience though I guess you would feel you had missed out if you didn’t go. I much preferred Uxmal which is less busy and has just as much to see.

Getting a ticket to the ruins at Chitzen Itza and Uxmal is confusing as you have to queue twice: once for a state ticket and then a federal ticket. The queues are chaotic! As you approach these sites you often get flagged down by official-looking people who are basically selling private tours: it would be better to ignore them.

I have heard that Coba is also worth a visit as you can cycle around the ruins and even climb up them. We didn’t get the chance to see Tulum as we spent too long at the Si’an Kaan Biosphere. 

We were very happy with all the accommodation.

A slight concern before we went was safety, but we felt at ease throughout. Driving in Mexico requires a sense of adventure as the roads are terrible in many places (I will never complain about potholes in the UK again) and there do not seem to be many rules of the road, or at least no one follows them. Petrol stations are not very numerous and once you leave a major town you might struggle to find any. Most only take cash, and few have any amenities.

So all in all it was an amazing trip, which the whole family enjoyed, and we are very happy with the service from Stubborn Mule and your in-country team.

Thanks for everything.

Just to note Day 9 – the Loltun Cave system was closed (we found this out before heading there), and also as it’s such a long drive we didn’t make it to Chachoben Ruins as they close at 3pm – may be worth advising future visitors to check opening times.

Nothing else of note – just a wonderful holiday.

I’ll send through some photos in due course. Thanks again for all your support in preparing for the holiday.

The accommodation was okay, the Mexico City hotel was perfect, the rest of the hotels were good/average but wondered if that was because it was last minute. 

The transport and arrangements were all good everything ran smoothly. Overall a very interesting trip, we thoroughly enjoyed the whole holiday. 

So now we need to think of the next trip! 

We have so many highlights I could write a hugely long email- but I think a couple of absolute highlights were Punta Laguna that first day.  The guide was amazing and all that zip-wiring, centote swimming, kayaking and rope ladder climbing really got us in the holiday mood.  

Our favourite hotel was probably the amazing Hacienda Uxmal and one thing you may like to know about for other guests is that across the road at their sister hotel (a two-minute walk) they have a collection of vintage Landrovers which, with a guide, you can drive around the Hacienda plantation, visiting the ruins of the original hacienda, as well as stopping to climb an amazing viewing platform and multiple stops to pick coconuts and limes which the boys just loved.  Our boys loved watching the guide cut open the coconuts with his machete and loved drinking straight from green coconuts!  

The Lake at Bacalar was also amazing- an absolute treat!  Like I say- I’ll stop there or this will be an essay!

Another highlight (I told you I could keep going forever!) was the Si’an Kaan biosphere – it has revolutionised how I want to wear life jackets from now on! Honestly though, floating down that river for half an hour was breathtaking. We all loved it and there wasn’t another tourist in sight!

Our one low point was the hotel in Tulum – it was a party hostel with unbelievably loud music outside our room until midnight, then pretty loud music until 3am…. Sorry to end on that but I figure it’s useful feedback.

All in all our holiday still rates 100% because everything else more than made up for that!

Thank you so much for all your hard work, support and enthusiasm for our holiday!  I’m quite sure we’ll book with you again!

Punta Laguna – an amazing first experience of the real Mexico, after a very long walk we managed to see the howler and spider monkeys, children loved the canoes and zip wire, lovely friendly people. Cenote a little scary for me (although I did it) not for the faint hearted but a great experience.

Yokdzonet Cenote – such a beautiful Cenote, we spent a lovely afternoon here in the sunshine swimming with the fish after Chichen Itza (which we also enjoyed) and the restaurant was also great.

Izamal – Hacienda was so lovely, such a quaint place with amazing food, loved it here. The Austrian man who ran this was so helpful, nothing was any trouble.  We also enjoyed our walk into Izamal and climb up the pyramid.

Sotuta de Peon – working Hacienda trip was a great experience for the children, we all loved it there too, very peaceful!

Bacalar – was such a beautiful place, we had an amazing time canoeing, swimming, boat trip was the highlight here…

Caye Caulker (Belize) – we really enjoyed the sea ferry over, although a little bumpy and immigration took a very long time, all added to the experience.  The different vibe of the island was lovely, so relaxed. Our best experience here was swimming with and feeding fish to Sting Ray’s at Iguana Reef and the Pelicans! Amazing! Paddle boarding was also lots of fun.

Tulum was also lovely, we all enjoyed a visit to Xel-Ha, eat and drink as much as you want went down well with the children and the snorkelling and fish was brilliant.

However our most amazing experience was in the evenings at Rosa Del Viento, watching the turtles come out the sea and lay their eggs and seeing the baby turtles.

So as you can see, so many amazing experiences, a holiday we will never forget!… Thanks once again and look forward to booking a future family adventure with you.

It was good to get out of Cancun on the first proper day… we had to chase up Europcar to collect us – I think they had forgotten to send someone. The car was really appropriate, comfortable air conditioned, and tough enough to cope with the multiple random sleeping policemen and other road hazards… it was a good choice thank you.

Punta Laguna was fantastic, my husband had his first zip wire and enjoyed it. The lagoon was amazing and the Cenote with abseiling and then the rope ladder was challenging but cool. It was the most wow one. Coba ruins excellent.

Re the hotel in Valladolid – It’s a shame we only stayed one night here as Gabriel, the Maître d’, was excellent, so helpful, room comfy, air-conditioned. He made excellent suggestion for dinner on the centre square.

We secured a guide which was really worthwhile for Chichen Itza – which we did on Saturday as you had suggested.  Here the lunch was delicious and authentic, and then we walked it off at the local city ruins.

The hotel in Merida was excellent with a great pool.

The hotel in Tecoh offered a fabulous tour. The lunch was great but dinner was awful- 2 choices, and the food was a bit like school dinners. We had to snack from a local Oxxo for 2 out of the 3 nights as there were no other local eateries

The flamingo experience fab and the cave complex at Lol-tun was really interesting, cool too. It’s important to emphasise you really need trainers for this… sandals just wont do.

The hotel at Lake Bacalar was excellent and visiting Sian Ka’an Reserve was stunning. Did the lazy river included in this inspire Centre Parcs?!

The hotel in Tulum was stunning. It was great to wander along that road and look at all the artisan stuff too. In your notes you advised us to see ruins really early lest we be mowed down by hordes. In the end there were approx 10 people all together – I wonder if that is just advise for ‘high season’.

Your lunch suggestions were spot on throughout you did not give one for after snorkelling in Akumel – we asked the instructors and they took us through to local place where the fish were amazing.

The last hotel was really good and friendly too. We did not do the water park but additional things we did that were available at Playa del Carmen were a food tour of the city that lasted 3 hours and was delicious and fabulous. Also swimming with whale sharks which was amazing.

Here’s hoping we can travel under your wing in the not too distant future.

Thought you might like some detailed feedback:

Cancun, hotel great

Car collection – they were late and we’d been up since 3/4am due to jet lag and were keen to get on with our travels. Anyway, it all got sorted.

Punta Laguna – we found this a bit dull as a first stop so barely stopped at all. Instead, I think you should suggest people stop at Coba like we did. It was absolutely fantastic to get a bike taxi and see the ruins, climb the big one at the end.

Valladolid was amazing, the hotel fantastic

Izamal excellent

Merida we thought was not a big wow city we expected. It would have been good to have some extra info for car parking in the city but we found somewhere.

Sotuta de Peon was amazing – we loved this one, the tour was brilliant but the tour was 3 hrs long so there was never anytime to drive to Celestun in the afternoon. Instead, we did Uzmal in the afternoon and did Celestun as a full day trip the next day, this seemed to work really well.

Bacalar – 2 nights was enough…the breakfast was not good but the location was good.

Tulum, loved it for the night

Akumal, amazing place but so disappointing with all the seaweed. We saw lots of turtles free swimming rather than on an expensive tour!

We all really, really enjoyed the cookery class with Laura – the kids were able to get involved with everything we made, we had great fun, and it all tasted delicious. We loved zip-lining, and the Uxmal ruins – it was raining so we virtually had it all to ourselves which was actually really nice and a real contrast to many of the other more popular sites.

We enjoyed cooling off in all of the Cenotes but especially loved the Cenote Sac Actun, near Tulum, – a stunning place to snorkel and experience the stalactites (n.b: it’s definitely not one for the claustrophobic and possibly worth giving the heads up to anyone who feels the cold, or has younger kids, to go for the wetsuit option, it really was freezing!) – but it was absolutely spectacular and totally different to any of the other Cenotes we swam in – all of which were amazing in different ways.

It was lovely meeting Miguel and his family at the hammock making – and luckily we were planning to buy a hammock so it was a pleasure to get one from a master (may have been a smidge awkward if someone didn’t want a hammock though).

Two bits of feedback: firstly, and primarily this is because our children are fairly young still, is that the itinerary turned out to be extremely busy and was possibly 10-20% too much for the kids. Alvaro had booked a few things in for the 1 day we had scheduled to have off, including a 4 hour round trip to see flamingos – it wasn’t on the original itinerary – in addition to a trip to a sisal museum, which we had to politely decline as the kids (and us too) were in need of a pool day. But it was fine in the end, Alvaro cancelled those things when we spoke with him, it just threw us a little when we had geared the boys up for a chilled day off that almost didn’t happen.

The only other bit of feedback is it may be prudent to be a little clearer on the itinerary about the trip to the biosphere. We felt like we were potentially going to see some of the wildlife listed on the itinerary as ‘animals to see in the biosphere’ but Alvaro told us that none of those animals are found in the bit where we were. So while we enjoyed our float down the channel in the mangrove, it was devoid of any wildlife at all (ironically probably because of the presence of us tourists!) which was a little disappointing.

But please take those as very minor points, we had a ball. Hacienda Temozon and Villa Pescadores were both great additions esp the former which was spectacular and we’d definitely recommend both to others.

It was all incredible. The beautiful towns of Vallodolid and Izamal were superb.  Our beach-based hotel on arrival was incredible (sadly it rained for first 24 hours so we were not really able to make most of it) but the Hotel Santa Domingo was such a gorgeous hotel and the Sotuda de Peon was practically empty with the most incredible rooms set in the grounds of the hacienda. Absolutely magical.

I could write a whole lot more about this trip Charlotte but we toasted you every day for having taken the stress out of working out a route, booking the most incredible hotels and getting us such a great deal on the flights.  Thank you!

The kids thought the centoes were great fun and three days on the beach at Akumal at the end was just perfect for us. What a truly special family trip! Please send our thanks also to your Mexican colleagues who were always so friendly and helpful.

Thank you from us all for a brilliant holiday.