Bethlehem, Jericho & Jordan River Tour from Jerusalem

Bethlehem and the birth place of the Lord Jesus. Jericho was peaceful, nothing at all as expected. It was an eye opening awesome experience.

Overall, we enjoyed the tour as it was generally well organized and our local guides (both Palestinian and Israeli) in Bethlehem and Jericho/Jordan river were both great and knowledgeable. Only issue was that the tour started more than 1 hour late and because of that, we had no time to queue to go to the grotto of Nativity. This was quite a disappointment. For the lunch at Mt Temptation, it would have been good for the restaurant to offer more choices rather than a just a buffet.

At the time of booking, the name of the tour (departing from Tel Aviv) was: BETHLEHEM, JERICHO AND JORDAN RIVER TOUR HIGHLIGHTS We have been on hundreds of tours through more than 50 countries and this really was the worst tour ever. Main concerns: *Main guide - lack of organization and professionalism *1st meeting in Tel Aviv was chaotic: one person checking in over one hundred people and passing out wrist bands, then waiting on the bus for everyone to get sorted out *1st stop in Bethlehem was a souvenir shop - waited about an hour here. No where on tour description did it mention souvenir shopping (multi times) - we would not have chosen this type of tour *Local guide had his back to half of the group for most of his talk at the Nativity Church - couldn’t understand most of what was said. He didn’t know where to stand to address entire group. *Did not see grotto (due to long line), which is one of the highlights of this tour *Told we could see inside Catholic Church, but not able to due to mass happening - shouldn’t the guides know the schedules of happenings? *Guide did not give specific instructions about getting drinks/food so people just stopped to do that when they felt like it…meant more waiting for those who didn't stop/know that people were stopping; people would just disappear on the way back to the bus because they wanted to buy something *Main guide and local guide were giving different/conflicting instructions to guests on tour *Biggest concern: At Mount of Temptations had to wait a very long time, as two guests were LEFT at the previous stop and we had to wait for them to be returned to us; also contributed to how late we were arriving to the cable car *The tour description clearly stated “Ticket to the cable car in Jericho; Your guide will use a service called Skip the Line to purchase your tickets in advance. They will collect cash for this on the bus. The Jericho cable car fee is 56 NIS/16 USD/14 Euro - we accept all 3 currencies. If you do not bring cash for this service, you may have to wait in line to buy your entrance ticket”. However, no money was collected. We were then told to pay 120 shekels each for cable car and buffet lunch - no explanation of what lunch was, except guide did say we could buy lunch à la carte (we specifically asked). We all waited in line to buy our cable car tickets and à la carte was NOT an option. In fact, because we didn’t buy the actual lunch, the waitstaff didn’t want us to sit with the group at all. *Guide told us to eat lunch and then wait to go to the monastery as a group. At 3:30 we asked what the plan was, as we had been waiting while everyone else was eating lunch. Our guide told us to go by ourselves to the monastery and be back at 4. When we got to monastery entrance, the man had closed the gates for the day. We did NOT get to go inside the monastery, which was a highlight of this tour and the main reason we paid to go up the cable car. The night of the tour, we contacted the company to express our concerns and asked for a refund. Three weeks after the tour, and after we sent an email reminder about our concerns, the company finally offered for us to join one of their “daily tours available or a 25% refund of your booking”. By then, we were long gone from Israel. We were not given the tour experience the company advertised; we will not use this tour company again nor will we recommend this tour to others.