Shopping Tour & Tulum Mayan Ruins

The tour was ok. The guide was informative, but the history lesson was short and he left us to wonder around for hours. The worst part was the jewelry store in the main complex. I purchase an opal ring, since the guide recommended them as the best around. I thought it was a good deal. I wore it to dinner twice and on the second night, the stone just fell out somewhere. So, I wasted good money on a cheap ring. Don't buy any jewelry from the vendor called Joyeria Tulum Tienda 1.

Overall it was a good your experience in the sense that the driver was on time and stuck to a timely schedule (both for pick ups and drop offs. I really appreciated that. The communication prior to pickup from our resort was pretty good as well. My primary gripes were two things that kept this from being a 5 star review (with caveats). 1. The tour included a 'shopping stop', but this is just to the jewelry store that I assume sponsors this trip experience (which allowed the cost to be less than $10 USD per person). That was fine for the most part, but definitely is a bit longer than it should last for on the overall travel day. That was not made very clear and since our driver didn't speak any English, he's Google translated message he showed on his phone upon pick up earlier that morning didn't make it clear that the shopping trip (as well as the Tequila tasting) was the same Martise and Co. place. Again nothing inherently bad, but I was thinking we'd be going somewhere that wasn't a single private business to shop. 2. The bigger gripe was the fact that once we got to Tulum, we still had to pay an additional cost to actually get into the archaeological zone for the ruins. The details of the trip mentioned admission being included, but what was not clear is that they were actually TWO admissions you need to have to enter the Tulum Mayan Ruins. One is to get to the actual city/town, and the other covers the entirety of the grounds, which includes the beach access. so once we got out of the tour bus, our driver gave us all tickets that were paper, but did not explain this, and since no one in the tour group had been before we didn’t know to ask/clarify this before we got out of the van, and he dropped us off. We still needed a wristband to actually get entered into the site. This lead to confusion and frustration for me and the others on the tour, as we still had to make another purchase that we were not expecting. So be prepared to have some additional pesos to cover this expense. I don't know why the full cost is not added into the overall tour price as it was only a extra few dollars, which I think people would still book this experience if the price went up to cover this. OK that concludes my gripes, so back to the overall experience review. Tulum was beautiful but hot, so definitely would recommend you bring plenty of water and perhaps back an umbrella for walking out and exploring the grounds. If you have enough time bring your swimming clothes or wear them underneath so you can check out the beach area too. This tour gave us at least 2 hours before the driver came back to pickup our group of 4.

It’s fantastic tour and very affordable. I was just disappointed for our bus transpo as indicated in booking that they will pick us up at the hotel but it didn’t happened. Just double check first and make sure.