We are four English-speaking Asian girls, we do not speak any Spanish. The Chichen Itza, two cenotes itself are very beautiful spots, but the entire travel arrangement experience was absolutely terrible.
Firstly, We got picked up at 7am, we were directly sent to a Mexican Outlet to “check in”, they gave you coupons to shop, it was almost like a forced shopping experience at the start of the day.
Secondly, for some reason they did not ask us what language we speak or prefer (we bought the English tour on Viator), the staff just wrote “China” behind our names and put us in a full coach of Latino passengers and the entire tour was only in Spanish.
There were a male and a female tour guide, the girl was nice to us when we ask her questions she would answer. However, the male tour guide was EXTREMELY RUDE and UNPROFESSIONAL to us. At some moments during the three hours ride, we fell asleep, took a nap, which I believe is incredibly reasonable. But the tour guide got angry at us and saying we do not listen to him, but he was not delivering a bilingual speech, it was 99% of the time Spanish. When we got off the coach, asked him to give us a brief explanation of chichen itza related information, he refused to tell us, saying because we fell asleep in our first ride, so there’s no reason to say things in English, yet, we were all awake for the whole remaining ride and was confused by only Spanish speaking explanations he was giving.
Thirdly, we spent over 13 hours on this trip, but only 40 minute in the Suytun Cenote, 1 hour in Chichen Itza, 30 minutes in the Ik kil Cenote, 15 minute in the Valldolid town. Why? Because he tried to sell us some “magic stones” on the coach like the image attached (and that was the time he would mention some English words), and he also took us to some “Shaman ceremony” that was not included in the itinerary and forced us to stay in a shop that sells artifacts and chocolate for an hour before lunch. It’s in the middle of nowhere, we literally cannot go anywhere else. It was very uncomfortable.
Fourthly, the whole tour group were a little 5-15 minutes behind schedule at all four destinations. We were 10 minutes late to return to the bus at Chichen Itza because we had to use our own English guide and find our ways back to the bus. Three of us got a little lost on the way, but still managed to get back. One of us was already with the tour guide, but the tour guide literally just left the three of us at Chichen Itza and drove away, regardless one of us told the guide we are coming. The tour guide was EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL AND CONDESCENDING, he did not put into any effort into helping us get back, and literally LEAD THE WHOLE COACH to “boo” us when we got back (wt*??) We are only four tourists in a foreign country, it was not what we signed up for.
What’s more, even though we told him we speak fluent English, we live in New York. He still used his microphone on the coach whenever we reach a new place “Time to get up China ladies” and just called us “China” the whole time. We found it very rude and racist.
In general, we suggest you DEFINITELY go visit Chichen Itza and the cenotes, BUT DO NOT GO WITH THIS TRIP!!!! AVOID AVOID AVOID