Great trip organised by the team! From the first moment, the team has been very responsive to our emails and the way the tour was setup exceeded our expectations. The help from the experience manager was very crucial in many circumstances (best example was that she organised to have a purse delivered from Argentina to Chile!!).
This is an excellent company. Jaimie ended up customizing a fit for purpose tour for me. This was important as I am on the wheelchair. This really helped make our stay in Chile enjoyable after some initial confusion. I highly recommend Jaimie. He customized tours according to your needs. Especially those on the wheelchair Jaimie will go out of his way to make sure you have what you need and personally directs the tour.
A very average coast tour of Valparaiso & Vina Del Mar We were picked up slightly early from our hotel (which suited us, as 10am seems a little late to be starting an 8-9 hour tour). Our guide Sebastian spoke good English and provided lots of good information enroute. We were expecting a wine tasting at a winery in the Casablanca Valley, but only got a small plastic cup of grape chicha at a roadside diner, which was extremely disappointing as the wine tasting was going to be a highlight for us (and the chicha was not nice at all...) We then drove to Valparaiso and stopped at Pablo Neruda's house - the entry fee was not included and very little information was provided, we were left to our own devices.The driving tour of Valparaiso was OK, but I think we spent a little too long in the car when we could have walked some of the interesting streets. We stopped twice, once at the port (nothing interesting to see there unless you are a ship spotter) and a lookout overlooking the port - which didn't add anything to the tour. At each stop, we were left to walk around by ourselves, with no advice or timeframes for the stops given. Lunch was at a tourist hotel overlooking the water - nice view and the food was good, but very expensive and we would rather have been given other options, especially to eat some of the local street food that the guide had talked about. Vina Del Mar was average - just a cold, windswept beach. Would rather have spent more time exploring Valparaiso on foot. The guide also spent a huge amount of time on his phone while driving - not very safe and also excluded his guests to a certain extent. A lot of the calls/messages seemed to be to the tour agency offices, which really should not be necessary while driving a tour group around and there was also a lot of checking of Instagram and Facebook, which was entirely inappropriate and unsafe while driving. Overall, good to see some of Valparaiso, but the lack of a winery visit and the ability to explore some of the more interesting areas saw us come away a little disappointed. Average at best unfortunately.
James MackenderTravel Expert in Peru and Chile
Maria BarcielaTravel Expert in Argentina and Chile
Oxana ProtchenkoTravel Expert in Argentina and Chile
