2-Day Guadalupe Shrine, Teotihuacan Pyramids and Xochimilco

We booked an English tour which is why, another English-speaking family and we were loaded on to a bus full of native Spanish speakers. The Day 1 guide's English was so fractured that 25% the time we spent trying to figure out what she was saying and the other 75% we had to listen to the Spanish commentary. I have some Spanish and it was very obvious that the English version was barebones. Obviously, I do not expect high flown English, but I think a fluent English-speaking guide is essential on a tour advertised as English. It is unfair to lump 2 English speaking families on to a bus load of Spanish speakers. That being said the trip to Teotihuacan was very enjoyable. I really liked the Obsidian factory tour, where one finds the best specimens. (BTW, Don't look for Obsidian pieces in other markets in the city, you won't find them anywhere else in the same scale) Day 2 was an even greater disaster. The guide was very late and when we went inside the hotel to call the agency, he came at that precise moment and rushed by, claiming that we had not been waiting. Be that as it may, his English was certainly better, but he had no great interest in talking or imparting any interesting information so the advantage was lost, Mostly he had no answers to the questions we asked him and he too was plagued by the tendency to deliver one liners in English and animated conversations in Spanish. As we rode in a cramped van, we saw a few walls/doorways of buildings, as the guide gave out the information that so and so lived here. We were then taken to the Frida Kahlo Museum where we were asked to look at the iconic blue walls and invited to take pictures. That’s all. We were told that there was nothing much inside......Really??? I felt a perfect fool walking back having seen some blue walls. That building is no iconic Guggenheim or Louvre. There is no point in being taken there if one cannot see inside. We were walked back to the St John the Baptist cathedral (which was awesome) and then we departed for Xochimilco having parked for a while in front of the Olympic stadium (no getting off allowed). Random buildings were pointed out as we whizzed by, the correlation between the said building, English and Spanish commentary having been long lost. Finally, we were taken to Xochimilco which may be the greatest tourist trap ever. The place was packed with boats, seemed more like a rush hour traffic jam on a flooded LA highway: the boat took 15 minutes just to pull out of its moorings and then came to a stop as we were strongly encouraged to buy lunch from the guide’s friend. Needless to say, the lunch was priced for tourists and of very poor quality. That cost us another 30 minutes and then we bumped our way for about 200 yards for 15 minutes before turning back!! Did not see any pretty floating market though there were a bunch of boats selling touristy kitsch. Even the guide remarked that we could tip the boatmen for "this mess" or we needn't!! After disembarking we had to wait around for what seemed like an eternity, in the baking sun, as the guide caught up on some gossip with one of his friends. I was so glad to get back to the hotel In summary, take my advice and give tour a miss. Do the trip to Teotihuacan with shorter tours. Explore the city on your own if you wish or find another tour. This one was ridiculous!!

Los guías fueron muy amables y se notó la experticia de cada uno de ellos en los temas históricos que envuelven los lugares que visitamos, abordando con claridad cada inquietud que fue consultada.