I have mixed feelings regarding this trip to Ek Balam. If you are deciding to go to Chichen Itza vs Ek Balam, then 100% go to Chichen Itza. I chose to go to both sites (on separate tours), because from my research Ek Balam is one of the last Mayan ruins in which you are still allowed to climb the pyramid. Because this tour did allow me to have this experience, I am giving it two stars rather than one.
On paper, the itinerary for this day trip is solid. You visit Ek Balam, then go to a small town to learn more about Mayan culture and have lunch (which is included in the price of the tour, but you have to pay for drinks), and get to go to a cenote. This was a really nice cenote too. You choose how you get down to the water - either walking down some wooden stairs or repelling down. Down in the cenote, there are two zip lines - a lower one and a higher one. So adventure seekers will enjoy this part.
Where this day trip really fell short was in how little this tour company, Wisest Travels, cares about its guests and their time. This is already a long day trip (planned for 10 hours), but ours took over 13 hours because of the poor decisions and logistics made by Wisest Travels.
My girlfriend and I were originally told to meet our bus driver outside of our resort at 7:30am. Then, the night before, Wisest Travel changed this to 7am. So we waited and waited. We texted with Wisest Travel's customer service through WhatsApp, but they were useless. They just kept on saying, "the bus driver will be there in 10 minutes." Then 10 minutes more, then 10 minutes more, etc. We were picked up at 8am.
What we did not know is that Wisest Travels decided to combine their Cancun tour with their Playa del Carmen tour. So while we waited for our bus to pick us up, there were other guests from Playa del Carmen that were waiting for us to arrive to them (which made everyone late).
This would have repercussions on the rest of the day trip. Because we were running late, Wisest Travel decided to cut the amount of time we spent at Ek Balam. My girlfriend actually decided not to climb the pyramid because of how steep it was and she was worried she would not be able to climb all the way up and back down again in the abbreviated time that we were given. This upset me greatly.
We next went to the small town and had lunch, actually driving past the cenote, to later have to backtrack to get to the cenote. This only wasted more time. I think on a normal tour that they would go from Ek Balam to the cenote and end in the small town for lunch, so as not to back track.
The biggest disappointment of all was how Wisest Travel decided to drop us back off at our resort. They decided to drive the bus to Playa del Carmen, then drop every other guest off at their resorts, and have a separate car meet us at the last resort in Playa del Carmen to drive us back to Cancun. If they were sending a separate car to drive us to Cancun, then why could they have not met us at the cenote or even at the first resort in Playa del Carmen. This wasted at least a good hour of our time! We arrived back at our resort around 8pm, meaning we missed having dinner with our friends that night who we had traveled to Cancun with.
Then there was our tour guide. He did the very minimum to fulfill his job. But he was so uninterested and unengaging. While he was giving the tour at the Ek Balam site, he actually yelled at guests for walking too slow or lingering too long to take pictures because he was on a tighter schedule he needed to keep us on. And on the entire tour he was chain smoking.
The point I am trying to make is that I was not expecting to pay good money to have my time on vacation wasted riding for hours in a bus or car. Did I get to visit Ek Balam and climb their Mayan pyramid? Yes. Was I safe on the entire day trip? Yes. But did I also have my time wasted? Yes. And did I feel like a valued guest of Wisest Travels? Absolutely not!
The bottom line is that if you have your heart set on climbing a Mayan pyramid while you are still able, then this is probably the day trip you will have to select since it was one of the few I found on Viator that was reasonably priced. Will Wisest Travel provide you everything on their itinerary? Yes. But you should go into it knowing that you might spend more of your valuable time on this day trip than you had planned and it might be led by a tour guide who is only going through the motions rather than caring if you have a good experience.
Deze rondleiding is een must. Er waren een paar minpuntjes waar de operator totaal geen controle over had, maar ze hebben dit goed afgehandeld en ons op het goede spoor gehouden. Onze gids was zeer behulpzaam en informatief. Dit is een erg lange dag, dus bereid je voor.