Tulum Ruins Cenote and Swimming with Turtles from Playa del Carmen

The tour guide team of Erik, Reth, and Arlan was extraordinary. Very knowledgeable and really wanted everyone in the trip to have a great time.

This tour was operated by NS Tours and sold by Viator. The tour description said it should be 7 - 8 hours. They held us prisoner for 12 hours! We barely spent 3 hours actually doing anything. The rest of the time was spent on the bus or waiting in tourist shops. Their pickup coordination was horrendous. They lost two of the people that should have been on our bus of 30. They made us wait for over an hour for the 2 passengers. They could have easily hired a cab to have them meet us at Tulum. Instead, it took us 3 hours to get to Tulum from our original pickup - an easy half hour drive. Then, even though we were running so late, they forced us to go to dinner at one of the guide's restaurants and then forced to go to a chocolate and alcohol factory that was already closed! Tulum is worth visiting and the turtle swim was good. There are separate guides at each of these locations. You can easily do these two things on your own. DON'T TAKE THIS TOUR! We were a group of five. Father and son plus three of son's friends ages 18 & 19. Last week of July and first week of August 2021. Here is what we did while in Playa Del Carmen to give you and idea of how the tours compared: First Tier: Scuba Life - Cozumel. Great dive masters, beautiful dives. Flyboard of Playacar, I didn't do this one but should have. The four boys were up in seconds and flew for ever. Great operator!!! Don't do this on the beach. Do it at the Mayan Water Complex. Mayan Water Complex - Flyboard and Wake Board by Wire. Didn't even know about this until we got there. Almost no one was there. They did kneeboard and wake board by wire. Amazing facility. Buggy Tour In Playa del Carmen. Great vehicles, great itinerary and great operators. Private Chichen Itza, Cenote and Valladolid Tour. This was a good (long) day. Our guide, Omar, was the best! He took us to a remote Mayan village for lunch and an amazing almost vacant Cenote! 2nd Tier: Rio Secreto Caves. This is a must see even though I rated in the 2nd tier. Well run operation and the caves are amazing. Small Group Eco-Friendly Whale Sharks. If you want a thrill, let them drop you in the water directly in front of a whale shark! Good operator and okay equipment. Long (2 hr) boat ride each way to the whale sharks. You only get two chances in the water for less than 10 minutes each. Royal Dolphin Swim. Good operation and great dolphins. We've done this twice, once in Marathon, FL. Third Tier: Xenotes. Very well run large commercial operation. Our female driver and guide (she wanted me to point out that she was female) did an excellent job. Some challenging zip lines and repelling. Pretty good food. Xplor. Run by the same company as Xenotes. Long lines. Ho-hum ziplines. Great underground caves and fun kayaking. Worst. Don't even think about going on this tour: Tulum Ruins Cenote and Swimming with Turtles from Playa del Carmen. This tour was operated by NS Tours and sold by Viator. The tour description said it should be 7 - 8 hours. The held us prisoner for 12 hours! We barely spent 3 hours actually doing anything. The rest of the time was spent on the bus or waiting in tourist shops. Their pickup coordination was horrendous. They lost two of the people that should have been on our bus of 30. They made us wait for over an hour for the 2 passengers. They could have easily hired a cab to have them meet us at Tulum. Instead, it took us 3 hours to get to Tulum from our original pickup - an easy half hour drive. Then, even though we were running so late, they forced us to go to dinner at one of the guide's restaurants and then forced to go to a chocolate and alcohol factory that was already closed! Tulum is worth visiting and the turtle swim was good. There are separate guides at the turtle beach and Tulum. You can easily do these two things on your own. DON'T TAKE THIS TOUR!

Tour guide was amazing. All three experiences we fascinating and learned some history as well. Cenoted and swimming with sea turtles was my favorite.

Overall the tour was good and the lunch served at the end was delicious. Our meeting point was a little unorganized. The guides we were meeting were late and they really did not have any identifying shirts in them. I felt like we had to track them down and almost thought we missed our group tour. Perhaps it would be helpful for them to hold a sign identifying the tour since so many people are meeting and it would be easier to find them. Overall we really enjoyed ourselves and the cenote was amazing and beauitful!

The guides were professional, helpful, and courteous. Here are the issues with the trip: - The trip is advertised as 7 hours but ended up taking 11 hours (8am-7pm) - The actual time spent doing the activities was at most 4.5 - 5 hours. The rest of the time was spent either waiting in line, waiting for the bus, or on the bus driving places, picking up and dropping off people, doing U turns because we went out of our way to pick up/drop off people, etc. That means roughly 55%-60% of the time was NOT spent on activities. This should be clearly stated in the tour description. You WILL spend most of your time doing nothing. - One of the activities was "snorkeling with turtles". The tour description said "snorkeling equipment" is provided. We expected to get a mask, snorkel and fins, but only a mask was provided .... no fins or snorkel. The activity shouldn't be called "snorkeling" if the proper equipment will not be provided OR, it should be clearly stated that guests need to bring their own equipment. This part was very disappointing to both of us.

Our tour guide was amazing “Helman” is highly recommended! He is attentive, kind, has great customer service, funny, and accommodates to your needs. Excellent experience, he is informative and funny. Great Job Helman!

Amazing Tour…. The best part of our trip was our tour guides, Rocco and Jorge. Cenotes were beautiful and we saw lots of sea life during the snorkel. Don’t forget bug spray during Tulum the mosquitoes were really bad. Definitely will be booking again next trip!

Very mixed experience. Covid shut down the Tulum ruins the day before we were scheduled to take this trip, which obviously put a damper on things. We were offered a whopping 15.00 refund on a 125.00 trip. The cenote was gorgeous and a total blast, couldnt recommend that enough. The snorkeling was trash. Its basically 25 minutes of staring at seaweed on the ocean floor and hopefully seeing a turtle or two, which gets swamped by all the OTHER tours trying to do the same thing. This could have been redeemed had we found a spot for lunch on the huge beautiful beach, but for reasons unknown to me, that wasnt an option. Basically a waste of time.

Ferlan and Zac where awesome and we had a great time took us to a great local spot to eat and even took us on a special tour at the end very and saw lots of sea turtles! Tulum is so pretty

Seeing Tulum was wonderful. Our guide was fabulous; so knowledgeable and truly interested in giving us insight into local culture. The site was wonderful, the cenote swim was awesome, the snorkeling was fabulous, and we truly enjoyed ourselves. Would go again, but a couple of drawbacks. 1. We would have liked to know in advance that there was no sun screen allowed to be worn during the snorkeling. We both fried to a crisp and the sunburn made the rest of our trip very uncomfortable. If I had known in advance, I would have taken other measures to prevent that. It was a danger to our health, and I was disappointed that we weren’t told before going. Also, time at the site was a little short. We only got 20 mins on our own to take pics, and since the site is so large and well-preserved, we were running to catch as many as possible. absolutely NO shade on the site. However, the buffet was wonderful, and we really appreciated that they also gave us a mid-meal snack, since the pick up was before breakfast and lunch was late. That made our day more enjoyable. All in all, well worth the time amd money.