07 Apr 2024
What was my favorite part of this tour? Being left at the gate for an hour and a half in 95° heat while they constantly lied to us that a driver was on the way? Perhaps the broken down van with no working air conditioning that finally showed up? It could even have been the tour operator Maria who then showed up to take us in that van to town where she spent the next few hours hustling at least five different tour groups in and out of activities so fast that you couldn’t enjoy anything. She left us to walk around an outdoor market while she took care of some of the other groups. We then ended up in a taxi that took us to a museum that was closed for an hour where she suggested we have lunch in an air-conditioned cafeteria, which was actually an outdoor row of tables next to the museum while she took somebody else to the botanical garden, where they only had 20 minutes and it turns out that garden is not at all accessible the one picture in the tour description is the only accessible path. All of the rest is gravel and rock. The museum however, it was absolutely awesome. So my four hour tour was 1 1/2 hour standing in heat at the port gate, 20 minutes at an outdoor street market (after driving there in an un air-conditioned van), sitting outside at a restaurant for an hour and 15 minutes waiting for museum to open and then a delightful 30 minutes in the museum. We had a taxi ride back to our ship. And I think my favorite part of all was the mere 300 characters that Viator allowed me to use to write in why I requested a refund and the 24 hour later response of we’re sorry that you were unable to participate in your activity but we cannot offer you a refund email. Trying to be fair I’d only requested half of the tour fee back. After many many years, I guess I should consider myself lucky that this is the first time I’ve had an issue booking an excursion through Viator. Definitely do not use this tour operator. I do heartily recommend the museum and if you are fully mobile, the botanical garden, the tortoises were awesome according to the people that saw them. The market street was also nice, but it’s hot and very uneven terrain with lots of steps in and out of buildings. In full transparency I do want to say that yes Maria did offer to take us back out the next day, and we briefly contemplated it but after the issues of the day before, and the fact that it was even hotter. I decided that I did not trust that things would go any better and thanked her for the offer but declined she then countered back with I’m organized and how about the botanical gardens which we’d already determined were not accessible for our group. This tour operator was juggling multiple groups at the same time, had the phone ring nonstop and was definitely overextended. I think I could’ve been very understanding if it if it hadn’t been for the constant lying and her trying to say that we were at fault, not her. We were at the assigned waiting point at 9:20 and messaged to let them know we were there, our tour was 9:30 every tour group except for the ones through her had somebody waiting for them with a sign with their name on it. This is what we’ve always experienced through the numerous tour we’ve done through Viator so this was definitely on Maria and not on us and Viator definitely let us down this time.