Kimkim Trip Reviews

The whole experience was wonderful. First of all, Brahim was very responsive when I was trying to book the vacation. He would get back to me quickly with any questions I had. And he kept me in the loop throughout the booking process. Next, I'd like to thank Mohammed, our driver who took great care of us over the entire duration of our trip (10 days). We felt like he was family. In fact, our daughter feel sick during the trip and he took us to the doctor right away and made changes to our itinerary to accommodate us. He was very friendly, polite and respectful. I would whole heartedly recommend them to anyone traveling to Morocco. And oh, Morocco is a beautiful country.

My family of four (two grown daughters, my wife and I) just returned from a 10-day trip to Costa Rica. KimKim was very easy to deal with. Adriana was our main contact, but when she was off Olman responded and helped us with our arrangements. Both were knowledgeable and helpful and worked as a team. We spent 3 nights in Playa Flamingo (near Tamarindo), 3 nights in the Arenal area (near La Fortuna) and 3 nights in Manuel Antonio (near the national park). We had lots of adventures, but also found the trip very relaxing. We did not rent a car. KimKim arranged for our transports. I'm sure this is much more expensive than renting a car, but as first time visitors to Costa Rica, we were concerned about road conditions and getting around. We observed some other travelers having trouble navigating, but they all seemed to get where they were going eventually. The drivers were always prompt, friendly and pulled over to show us things, especially when they knew areas where sloths or crocodiles were typically spotted from the road. (Special shout out to Jonathan who was our driver on three days.) Having drivers definitely made it a stress-free vacation. It would have been helpful to have a car in Playa Flamingo as there were other beach towns just far enough away that you need to drive and it was not certain that we could get taxis back. We took a Catamaran sunset cruise with Panache sailing. The guys working the cruise were great and friendly. You stop and snorkel but it was not good snorkeling. We heard there was much better snorkeling spots back in Playa Flamingo, but you're really there for the cruise which is very relaxing (even though it felt like there were too many people on board). We stayed at the Lost Iguana in Arenal. Very very nice. It's remote and in the rain forest. Highly recommend. It's a 30 minute drive to La Fortuna. We just took all of our meals at Lost Iguana. We did the SkyAdventures zipline. Very thrilling experience. Even though we were scared to death by the heights and the speed, we highly recommend. Another highlight was the farm tour and cooking class as Vida Campesina. My family likes to cook. It was a fun, informative and delicious evening. We did a "hike" to the La Fortuna Waterfall. It's not a hike. You walk down steps to the waterfall. It's beautiful and we swam in the very cold water, but you don't need a guide for this. If you have a car, just drive there, pay the entry and walk down to see the waterfall. We went to the hanging bridges, which is set up like an amusement park. That was initially a turn-off, but once in we really enjoyed the walk through the rain forest, the views and bridges. If you go to the Manuel Antonio national park, you could skip the hanging bridges and do something more adventuresome. We stayed at the Mariposa Hotel in Manuel Antonio. It is perfectly located at the top of the mountain with great views (amazing sunsets every night), and walking distance to the best restaurants we ate at in Costa Rica (Emilio's Cafe, Agua Azul and Milagro). We only ate breakfast at the Mariposa. Breakfasts were nice at both hotels. We went into the National Park with a guide. You must have a guide or you won't see anything. They have special scopes and spot things animals that are camouflaged or too high up in the trees to see with the naked eye. Don't be turned off by the crowds. It's good to have a few guides around because they tell each other what they have spotted, so you are bound to see more things if there are other guided groups in the area. We spent a few hours at the Playa Espedilla Sur (beach) in the park. Great beach, but beware of the animals. The monkeys come down and try to steal from the tourists, we also saw a raccoon try to do the same. We also did the boat ride through the Damas estuary to see the mangroves. Very relaxing. We used Aventuras Tropicales. It's a family business. At the end you eat a home cooked lunch of typical Costa Rican cuisine at their home. The boat ride feels like the Disneyland Jungle Cruise. We saw many birds and some monkeys, but mostly it's just a relaxing cruise. We don't regret doing it, but it's not very adventuresome. Younger kids might get very bored very quickly. Note, the weather forecast often showed rain, but it mostly rained at night or while we were driving but never rained during any of our activities. Not sure if that was typical or we were just lucky, but the point is not to fret over weather. I'm sure we paid a premium to use KimKim's services, but we think it was worth it as they made it a seamless process and the result was a great time had by all. We would use KimKim again. Many thanks to Adriana and Olman.

Was surprised that the whole tour right from kimkim is 100% outsourced to someone else with no accountability to customer experience. Found out the operator is a freelance for a tour operator to kimkim. All the time, whole tour operator was focused to fulfill his obligation with zero flexibility. Their non availability during weekends made it worse. Since this is my first tour experience thru kimkim and having always leveraged TripAdvisor and Viator, most of my trip could have been achieved at my pace and 60% lower cost by directly working with Viator. Most of my trips could have been day trips as I found out as we are only few hours from the main city and could have covered more locations.

It was less than a month away when we finally decided on Andalusia, Spain as the destination for our family trip during Christmas and New Year 2019. Being last minute and high traffic period, I turned to kimkim for help in connecting with our local Spain travel specialist Angela for her expert advice. She was fantastic in helping to reshape our itinerary based on understanding of our hopes and needs as well as logistic challenges of traveling among various cities sometimes during public holidays. Paloma and Samuel were also very helpful during our stay in Seville during new year eve and New Years day. Our best guide by far was Victor in Malaga during our first stop. Malaga also turned out to be our favourite stop as a family which included visits to Frigiliana and Nerja. Such picturesque seaside towns! Returning to Granada/Alhambra was amazing, as well as walking through the major sights and city of Seville. Cordoba was inspiring as a first time visitor but regretfully we didn't have enough time there. Jerez's visit was a breath of fresh air from the monuments with equestrian school and Sherry tasting. Ronda was definitely worth the trip over and Marbella was such a relaxing town to end our amazingly colourful trip. Great introduction to the fascinating richness of culture and history, art and architecture of southern Andalusian Spain for our family. All thanks to Angela and Carameltrail!

Anne is amazing: always goes the extra mile to accommodate any request
Excellent guides and hotels
Very well organized tour

Our recent family vacation to Palawan and El Nido was a delight for this group of "landlubbers". The arrangements-hotels, travel arrangements and activities were top notch. Our local guide Stephen Tuboc was friendly and an epitome of knowledge.
I have never seen such beautiful turquoise beaches before which were not swarming with tourists. The activities were planned with a lot of thought, so nothing seemed rushed. Snorkelling in the midst of lovely corals and multicoloured tropical fish was a "once in a life time experience". I would definitely reccommend this trip to anyone who loves nature!!

My family enjoyed our 8 day trip to Myanmar so much! We have been to over 80 countries and taken many tours, and this particular tour was one of the best. Every guide was there to meet us at the airport right when we exited the baggage area and were so helpful with the four internal flights. All internal flights were safe and nice--with meals even served on two of them. The drivers always had water and wet wipes available and all vehicles were all clean and comfortable. All accommodations were fabulous (we honestly did not know what to expect in Myanmar). The breakfasts at each hotel were amazing and the places the guides took us for lunch were wonderful as well (always Indian, Thai, Chinese of Myanmar dishes available). The activities of the tour were good as well. I was a bit templed out towards the end, but if we had wanted to do or see something else, the guides would have made it happen. The pace of the schedule was good with a mix of early mornings and some later starts and with most tours/activities for the day ending around 5, we had time for dinner and relaxing each evening.

I have just returned from 13 trip to Morocco with my 2 adult children. Brahmin, our consultant, worked out an excellent itinerary from our wishlist, which gave us many experiences of the diversity that is Morocco. Accommodation in small hotels and riads was excellent. Our driver, Rachid, deserves special mention. His extraordinary care and attention meant that everything went smoothly. In the many hours we spent together in the (very comfortable) car, Rachid was generous in sharing his country's history, stories and modern culture, which made Morocco come alive. I had no real perception of Morocco prior to arriving, but left with a deep appreciation and respect for this wonderful country. Everything was fabulous, and the vast diversity and natural beauty of the regions is astonishing. At all times we felt safe and the Moroccan people are so friendly and welcoming. It is a truly unique country and I cannot recommend visiting Morocco and using these services highly enough.

James and Rocio were always on top of everything. Tour was well thought out and we had a great time. Andalusia Region is so beautiful, we will be back for sure.
Local hotels and guides were also amazing, we couldn't ask for more.

Highly recommend this trip and also its crew.

Palomares Family

We had nice vacation in Ecuador and Galapagos Islands - it was one of our best vacation. All transfers and accuracy were excellent. Majority of tours were superb - the best guide was Veronica, the first tour after arrival to Santa Cruz - Turtles Farm and Darvin Station. The last one on the Islands - Bay Tour was ok: tour guide had limited English (basically few major sentences), also it was a similar one we had already on the islands earlier.
Once again, thank you so much for organizing one of the best our vacation, we enjoyed it a lot. We are already thinking to visit more countries in Latin America.
All the best Yelena and Roman

Erin was awesome. I felt like I was talking to a friend in the planning process. She really listened to what I wanted in my experience and that I had experience with. She definitely had a huge impact on my dream trip. I couldn’t have done it without her!

My husband and I travelled in Colombia with our four children (ages 11-15) and overall we very satisfied with the kimkim experience. The planning stage was fantastic-- I spoke with an agent in the US and also an agent in Colombia-- and it was very easy to come up with a specific itinerary to fit the needs and wants of my family. Our local specialist (Chio) was very responsive to my questions and requests and always responded in a timely manner.

For the most part, everyone involved in tourism who was recommended by kimkim (the drivers and guides for example) was excellent-- very professional and always on time. When we had drivers that did not speak English they let us know in advance and we always knew the specific itinerary for each day. The trip, in general, ran VERY smoothly. Over fourteen days there was only one mistake--- when we arrived at a certain hotel it turns out they had mistakenly booked us at a hotel with a similar name (which was not as nice as the one we were supposed to be in). As soon as we called her, Chio (and her supervisor Jules) immediately tried to rectify the situation-- we did have to spend one night at the wrong hotel but the next day they had us moved to a much nicer hotel and took the extra step of arranging for us a new itinerary for a "day at leisure" including a driver, lunch, and two excellent activities. They (Chio and Jules) kept in constant contact with us making sure we were happy with the new arrangements. (And I felt like they were truly sorry for the mix-up).

All in all I would definitely recommend kimkim-- it was VERY user friendly and our itinerary was excellent.

(If you are planning on going to colombia-- we particularly loved our Hacienda Santa Clara in the coffee region and our tour of Don Juan coffee farm, horseback riding in the cocora valley, EVERYTHING in Medallin, the beach and tubing in Palamino (outside Santa Marta), and our incredible hotel (the hyatt) in Cartagena.

Our experience with kimkim and the Peruvian Soul team led by Jesus was fantastic! Jesus suggested a wonderful itinerary based on one conversation! We started with a bike tour in Lima and hit the most beautiful sites around the Sacred Valley and Cusco with knowledgeable and skilled guides. Alexis expertly led us on the one day Inca Trail and Machu Picchu and took us to stunning sites around the Sacred Valley. Besides hiking, we did stand up paddle boards on Piuray Lake, horseback riding around Apu Wanakaure (thank you Javier for being so patient with me), and wandered the narrow lanes of Cusco. We went to evening dance shows and fabulous restaurants. The finale was a visit to Rainbow Mountain!! We recommend going up by horse ;)
Many thanks to Jesus for organizing such a wonderful tour for us. We recommend him highly!! This was an unforgettable trip!!

The whole trip was very well organised.
The initial specialist Yasantha put together a very comprehensive itinerary that covered all the places I wanted to see and more. In fact it was so busy that I had to ask my driver/guide for some time off from all the sight seeing!
Boni the driver was very courteous and helpful and struck the right balance between being informative and not engaging in conversation.
Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the holiday.
Thank you
Jason

Morocco has always been one of the countries that I look forward to visit. It was plainly picture-perfect and as an Asian living in North America, I was looking to travel to feel the culture shock. Through Morocco Immersion, I met Sharon and she was really helpful in tailoring the perfect tour for me and my husband. In the airport, we met our tour guide Amnay, which is btw, also an amazing guitar player and singer. He was friendly and very honest and informative. I have come to learn that it is not only picturesque but also rich in history, culture, colours and life. Morocco has landed a special place in our hearts and we are already looking forward to experiencing the desert on our next visit!

We had a wonderful experience using KimKim and Laura as or local guide/planner. This was a last minute trip for us and all was planned within a month of the trip. I was very impressed with the organization and support of the planning process and the local providers. We loved our guides...Jose in Madrid, Victor in Seville, Elana in Cordoba and Salome in Toledo. All were knowledgable, energetic, passionate about their cities and a pleasure to spend time with. We also loved our boat cruise on the river in Seville!

The experience booking was extremely helpful for someone who does not enjoy or have time to plan a long trip. It was great having guides when we traveled into less touristy areas, and I really appreciated having all the transportation pre-arranged with no day of coordination required. We particularly enjoyed our guide Phạm Khiêm who took us on an over night trip to Pu Luong.

Working with Erin and kimkim was absolutely the best decision we made for our trip Patagonia. Erin was able to answer all of our questions leading up to the trip and help us create the perfect itinerary. The support only continued while we were there when she helped us reorganize our initial plans after a flight delay. We are beyond grateful and would recommend kimkim to anyone!

Excellent. We really enjoyed all parts of our trip. The tour guides were excellent and the trip was well planned and very enjoyable.

Every aspect of our trip was well choreographed. Isabel did a great job making sure things moved along seamlessly. Our cruise on the Coral 1 in the Galapagos was wonderful. The staff was very professional, knowledgeable and kind. The snorkeling was fabulous. We then went to the rainforest. What an experience- one extreme to another. We enjoyed our canoe trips and jungle walks immensely. One thing I would strongly recommend is flying in and out of the amazon instead of driving. That was not at all fun. In all, my family as I were very pleased with our trip!