Kimkim Trip Reviews

We were really pleased with Chris's response time and the trip schedule for making our way around the country. It was clear that Chris was not aware that a few of the sites and one of roads were closed for the winter. I also specifically asked about Glymur falls in the winter and if the log was across the river and what it would be like in March. Chris said the log would be there, however it was clearly marked on the sign at the trailhead that the log is not there in the winter. The hike was very snowy. We were prepared for that. Good hike either way but again some misinformation given the time of year. Our accommodation was generally excellent and very comfortable for our family of four. The OK hotel was good but the "pull out couch" was not long enough even for me to sleep on (I'm 5 foot 5 inches) let alone two 17 year old boys. Just good to know if you are putting a family in there it would work for two young kids.

Everything was well organized and explained in the itinerary

They checked in in the trip when I was there and ensured everything went as planned

We had a wonderful experience in Nepal with the help of KimKim and Ngima Dorji. KimKim helped plan the trek and answered lots of questions. Joost of KimKim gave us itinerary and hotel ideas, all of which were great. When we arrived in the Kathmandu airport, we were met by Ngima's son and later Ngima himself. During our entire 3 week stay in Nepal and throughout both of our treks, Ngima made us feel as if we were his only clients, even though he had many groups and trekkers there at that time. I would definitely use KimKim to help plan another trip. Ngima Dorji was amazing in Nepal and I cannot imagine using any company other then Nepal Myths and Mountain Trails.

Chris was very helpful and insightful. Always repsonded promptly.

Loved his suggestions and his possible itineraries he laid out for us. There were options and comments to help us gauge how we can cover all that we intended to see.

We were very pleased with our experience in Cartagena and Isla Mucura. We did not appreciate the difficulty of the 13.3-mile hike planned for our second day in Colombia. (For example, we did not know how long the hike would be. We had an estimate of how many hours in would last, but not of the difficulty.) We are in good shape, but this was a daunting scramble though and over boulders and with a 300-meter plus gain in altitude in a tropical jungle.
We were disappointed in the Casa Lina Hotel in Palominos and in the Casa Amarilla Hotel in Mompox. The language barrier was high in both locations, the beds were uncomfortable and the staff were correct but not friendly.

We seemed to have difficulty understanding each other. When we needed help with a billing dispute (in Mompox) and in adjusting our itinerary (in Palominos), she was not readily available.
As in other aspects of the trip, we were to blame for some of this. We should have pursued more subjects before we left, regarding temperatures, hiking difficulties, sunscreen, etc. I was also disappointed when we were asked for full payment earlier than I expected.

David was responsive, friendly and helped with his expertise of travel and the country. I felt like he completely understood the needs of my family and what it took to make our trip the best ever. He answered every single question I had and helped to make our trip even more memorable with his suggestions of where to stay, eat, and what areas of Ecuador we should see. He helped to make sure every little detail was thought of and taken care of. I didn't have to worry about anything. I would plan every trip I had with David.. he was great!

Ngima took care of all of the planning and everything worked out perfectly (apart from the weather!)

Ngima gave us a great service, make everything painless.
The guide and the Porter where really nice, they did a great job. Definitely we did love the experience

I can't say enough what a pleasure it was working with these folks for our trip into the Amazon for our honeymoon. From the time I made the initial contact with KimKim until the end of our adventure, we felt like we were the only concern they had. We worked with Nathalie on the front end for lining the trip up and making sure we had everything we needed. She was very thorough and polite, and kept in excellent contact with me prior to the trip.
Once we arrived at the airport in Leticia we waited a few minutes for our ride to show up and then were taken straight down to the office to get ready for our 4 day trek into the Amazon jungle! Thats where we met with our guide Ramiro, were promptly issued some rubber muck boots, and went over some necessities for our trip. We didn't bring enough mosquito repellent or rain ponchos, so we made a quick stop at the store to grab some and then had a nice lunch with our guide at a restaurant there in town. Once we were ready to roll, we hopped in a cab and were driven about 20 minutes outta town, where we got out and the 3 of us began walking through the jungle. Immediately I was feeling grateful that they gave us the rubber boots and told us to grab more Deet!! We eventually started fondly calling the bug repellent "Amazonian Cologne". It worked great though and really as long as we kept some on, the mosquitoes really didn't bother us that much.
We walked for maybe a couple hours into the jungle to a Maloka and met with some of the native people there working on the plantation. Our guide Ramiro knew the people well and immediately introduced us and explained what they were working on. We had some supper and just hung out for a little bit until it got dark. Then we went for a hike into the jungle to look at the nocturnal wildlife, which was really awesome to see everything!! We saw all kinds of cool stuff! That night we met with the Shaman and shared his Mumbai. We had a good talk with him and learned a bit about their culture, which we found very interesting!
The next day we woke up & had breakfast & then hiked for several hours through the jungle to a remote Lodge where we showered & relaxed for awhile. After supper we hiked for about 15 minutes to a huge tree where we repelled UP about 100 feet to a big platform just above the jungle canopy. Ramiro was given instructions by the company to leave us alone in the tree house for a few hours, since it was our honeymoon, so he set us up with some rose petals, grapes & chocolates, and a bottle of champagne, and then they went back to the lodge for a few hours so we could have some privacy ;) The next morning we woke up to see the sun rise over the jungle, zip lined out of that tree into another tree platform, and repelled down to the ground. What an experience! We hiked for a couple hours to the river and boarded some kayaks and took off paddling. It was high water season so the river was swollen up and into the jungle so we had a lot to look at from the kayaks. We paddled a couple hours and finally made it across a big lake to another Lodge where we ate lunch and met our boat captain. The last leg of our journey was in a small boat where we got to see a bunch more wildlife, including sloths, toucans, monkeys, pink dolphins, grey dolphins, green parrots, and piranhas! We fished for and caught piranhas and took them back to the lodge where they cooked them for us! They were great! We drank some cachacas with the folks who run the lodge and then went off to bed. The next day we boarded the boat again and made our way back to Leticia to conclude our trip.
All in all I would say our Amazon jungle experience was truly amazing! The people that we met were all so nice, courteous, and respectful, and you could tell they sincerely appreciated our business. We feel that we made lifelong friends with our guide Ramiro, and hope to stay in contact with him through Facebook. He had everything lined out perfectly and even cooked most of the food we ate on the trip! What seemed like an amazing trip to us was literally just another day to him. He has done hundreds if not thousands of those trips and we felt safe the entire time.
I would highly recommend this company for your trip into the Amazon. They did a great job for us and was worth every dollar we spent on it!!! A+

Chris was there to help me with everything with a fast response!

The Guides were fantastic and I was impressed Harpa put it together exactly to our needs with so little notice

The overall experience and final results were good but communication was frustrating. You do everything by internet which is fine for a young generation but for a senior generation this impersonal approach is difficult and when in transit usually without wi-fi availability it becomes challenging. Unfortunately our contact left your company at a critical time although both girls were excellent.

The overall plan was generic but the notification of pickups was and van drivers were last minute. The local transport companies and drivers you contracted were outstanding punctual and polite. In our party, 3 did not speak any Spanish and I fluent in both ended doing all the translating and acting as a guide not a big deal but if you are going to expand tourists from North America you should try to get ones with a little English.

From Pasto to Cali travel company Tierra y Cielo as well as driver Henry Patoja and guide in Medellin Maria Elena Marín were A1. Travel companies Cali Salento and salento Medellin I give a A. English guide in Salento was charming but English very limited. Your hotel choices Le park in Medellin was good and ideally situated and Hacienda Cairo was excellent and highly recommended. As a born Colombian living in Canada I was happy to show my wife and friends Colombia in a positive way and very happy with your arrangements

Over Xmas, I now intend bringing my children and grandchildren for a two-week visit and hope we can work together again.

Pick up info at each point was last minute, all else was well. Nathalie and Katheryn were good.

My itinerary was great overall. Well paced, stopped at many terrific highlights and quite achievable.
It did however feel like it was written quite generically - that is to say, just a copy paste job rather than something tailored. As an example, one restaurant in Hellnar which was recommended (and pretty much the only one for miles) was closed for the winter. This is confirmed with a search on Google, it's not a one off. I would expect this recommendation to be removed for winter trips. Mentions of daily drive distances were a bit off - example, the second last day I had to drive from Skaftafell to Reykjavik (320km, 4hr), not Vik to Reykjavik (180km, 2hr20min) as mentioned in the itinerary. My guess is that Chris used a base itinerary to build mine which is fine, but some of the smaller details were not altered to conform to mine.

My main gripe though is the choice of car hire. I should have looked more closely before agreeing, but I'm generally wary about dodgy operators other than the core Avis, Budget, Hertz, Thrifty. While it might be cheap initially, they do the hard sell at the desk on added insurances, in this case 30 Euro a day (for things like gravel protection, sand protection, reduced excess etc), which still has exclusions. I asked Chris about insurances, he said it included liability and collision and asked if I wanted any additional. Turns out that cover doesn't cover much, and it still includes an approx. $2200AUD excess. Further - the company would put a hold on my card for $2200AUD for going on 10 days after the rental has ended. This is really unsettling and not to mention an inconvenience.

While this isn't strictly Kimkim/Chris's fault, the selection of the car hire company is really important. The discussions online about the chosen car hire company are really worrying.

Chris was very responsive and answered all of my questions promptly.

Our trip to Iceland couldn't have been more perfect. To start with, it is a beautiful country and we were very fortunate to have had perfectly clear weather the entire 5 days we were there in February/March, after what we had been told was a very rainy winter. 18 inches of snow fell just before we arrived, and the Northern lights were out every night, making it a winter wonderland. That part was sheer luck, but on top of that, the trip was as smooth as we could have hoped. Our driver was waiting at the airport and took us right to our hotel which we had booked the previous night because of our very early morning arrival. The first day in Reykavik we planned on our own. The next 4 days were planned by the kimkim operator. We had private tours of the Golden Circle and the south coast, and a group tour to the Thorsmark wilderness area. On the final day we took a quick tour of the Reykjanes peninsula and then a stop at the Blue Lagoon before heading to the airport. We had 2 guides for those 4 days, and both were very friendly and knowledgeable and made everything run so smoothly that we didn't have to worry about a thing. We felt very lucky that our guide for the south coast tour had grown up in the area, and he took us to see places where his family had lived and told us the stories behind them. Although we did some of the usual tourist things, we loved also going to a few places where we didn't see another person. The hike up the mountain where his great-great grandfather had a farm was spectacular. We appreciated his flexibility in changing the plan on the last day when we were tired and wanted to get back to the hotel a little bit earlier than planned.

The only thing I would have changed about our trip was the trip to the Blue Lagoon, but that is in hindsight. We had heard a lot about it and felt like we had to go see what it was all about, but it was too crowded and too touristy for our tastes. The hot lagoon was a unique experience, but if I had to do it over again I would try one of the natural springs out in the countryside instead, and save a lot of money too!

As far as the planning process, I have tried several different online travel planning services, and I really like the way kimkim uses a back and forth conversation to plan the details. It's much quicker than other services that start with a formal proposal, which then has to be laboriously modified if you want changes. For our Iceland trip, the local operator started with a general plan, then narrowed down the details, and then presented a completed proposal. Most of my communication was with the local tour operator, but on 2 occasions when there was a breakdown in communication the Kimkim team stepped in and sorted it out quickly. I hope kimkim adds more locations to their offerings. I will use it again.

A couple of very small details that could have been improved - our trip to Thorsmark was 1-1/2 hours longer than described. It seemed as if our guide added on some things at the end to give us our money's worth, but we were tired and would have been happy to end on time. Part of the reason we were so tired was because on our hike the guide raced ahead of the group instead of going at our pace. We weren't all 20-somethings who hike glaciers in our spare time, and it isn't much fun hiking if you are worried about keeping up! A final small detail - water in the jeep would have been nice. But these were small things. Overall the trip was amazing.

Actually, very good except for day in Pandaya which we found disappointing at best. The drive was too long for relatively little to see or do. Additionally the Pindaya Inle Inn was terribly shoddy. The bed and pillows were so hard we ached the following day. The room was dark and not vey clean, and the wooden floor uneven posing a trip hazard. This is not a 4 star room...a 2 in our view.

The time lag with responses was a bit trying at times, but overall very good.

I was met at the Kathmandu airport by Raj as promised. He had a cab waiting for me, and I was taken quickly to my hotel. After I settled in, Raj introduced me to Dawa who was to be my guide for the trip.

Dawa proved to be an excellent guide. He was courteous and knowledgeable. Also, Dawa was very patient with me, as uphill riding is not my strong point. The next morning, our first ride was through parts of Kathmandu and up to the Shivapuri National park. I was able to see parts of the Nepalese culture that most tourists don't see. The ride in Shivapuri was fantastic, and I actually saw some monkeys among the trees. That night we stayed in the Shivapuri retreat where we had a nice meal of Dal Bhat with tea.

The next morning, we rode back into the Shivapuri forest, and hit some awesome mountain biking trails, making our way to Bodinath. We spent time at the Stupa until the car came and picked us up to catch our flight to Pokarrah. On the following day, we flew from Pokarrah to Jomsom for the center piece of the trip...Mountain Biking the Lower Mustang region. Once we got to Jomsom, we rode our bikes up the Kali Gandaki river to the village of Kagbeni. We stayed in a tea house in Kagbeni for 2 nights and for two days rode bikes on through some amazing high desert terrain.

After the stay in Kagbeni, we turned our bikes down the river course to back to Jomsom. One night in Jomsom, and then back on our bikes to Kalopani. Riding down the river course took us through several small villages that reflect the real Nepal. Truly a great experience. After leaving Kalopani, there was one more big ride to a point some 25 km down stream where we were met by a Jeep to take us back to Pokarrah.

Through this entire trip, everything was well planned out and prepared. The hotels, the flights, the ground transportation, nothing was overlooked. I was well taken care of. My guides, Dawa and Tendu were superb, and basically just good people to be around. The coordination and professionalism of all of the guys who handled my trip made it a great success. I will be going back to Nepal, and I will use this crew again. Many thanks to Dawa, Tendu, Raj, and Mads!!

We asked for a challenging trek- more or less two days in one- in the season at the end of the winter.
Our years long experience with Ngima Dorji Sherpa through Nepal Myths and Mountain Treks, and our guide, Karma Sherpa with whom I also are climbing many years, proved once more key to a successful and memorable week.

My guide Lhakpa was a really sensitive and thoughtful man, gave me plenty of space on my own to walk and reflect but was also companiable and knowledgeable and that made the trip even more enjoyable.

He is really accomplished and personable and I would thoroughly recommend him.

The trip was well planned! Only thing is i wished that the porter and guide where treated more as guests than employees of the hotel. In our night at dhulikhel, the employees said that our guide & porter could only eat when they ate. While we had hot shower and luxuriously a heater, our guide and porter only had cold water. The disparity was not nice to witness

Mads was patient in answering my questions, proactive, had suggestions to my problems.

It was a last minute thought about trip, however the tour got planned by Raj of Social tour through kimkim so well that it gave feel of well planned one. The tailor made trip of four day was planned perfectly with A/C car , excellent guide Mr Sushil and versatile driver Suman. It was extremely pocket friendly despite mountain view flight thrown in the package by Raj. Exposure to genuine singing bowls was a mesmerising experience among other events.