19 Jun 2024
The trip was lovely from start to finish! The driver was very kind and a great story teller. The national park guide was nothing short of inspiring. Seriously. I’ll never look at fallen trees the same way again, and I feel like I’ve learned more about forests and ecology in just three short hours than I had in my entire life up until this point. The guide was also good at answering every question I had in a very detailed way. I’d give him ten stars if I could.
The only problems came before the tour. Less than 24 hours before the tour began, the operator sent me a message saying that I must pay an extra 100 Euro because I was a solo traveler, or else I could take a trip to Auschwitz instead of the national park trip that I’d booked. This was quite shocking, because the cost that I paid for the tour was already half of my monthly salary, and I assumed that I wouldn’t be allowed through viators system to book a tour at anything other than the correct price. The organizer did listen to my concerns and eventually gave me the tour that I’d booked at the price I’d paid for it. However, it’s something to be aware of if you’re a solo traveler. To the operator, I hope you can update your Viator listing to either not allow solo travelers or to charge them the price you hope they will be paying from the beginning. Nobody likes to be surprised at the last minute with extra charges, and just the idea of a trip to Auschwitz that I wasn’t emotionally prepared for when what I wanted to see was trees and cute animals was quite upsetting.