Kimkim Trip Reviews

Before the trip started, I missed my flight due to busy day at the airport and accidentally didn't read the memo about my car rental but despite that, Alex and crew were able to keep the trip from falling apart and did everything in their power to make my trip amazing, I spent 13 days in Costa Rica and did did a self drive everywhere from Liberia to San Jose while hitting places such as Rincon, Arenal, Monteverde, Samara Beach and Dominical to name a few and I was able to do pretty much everything I wanted to do in Costa Rica thanks to Alex's brilliant trip planning! On top of that, the hotels that were booked for me were all top notch and there were plenty of opportunities to have lunch and dinner no matter where I stayed. If you plan to stay in Costa Rica anytime soon, I highly recommend having Alex from Amazonia to plan your trip with you! My advice for trip planning are if you only drive automatic transmission, make sure you let Alex know so he can rent to best car possible for you and if you miss the flight like I did, make you sure you let Alex know so he can revise the plan accordingly!

I had the pleasure of having Chris as local specialist and Willy as my guide fr=m the company Old Town Outfitters throughout the week from 10/01/2021-17/01/2021. I did the 8 days multi-sport trip for Guatemala and it was everything I could ask for in a trip! Most of the trip consisted of hiking and biking around Antigua as well as volcanoes around the area as well and we visited a chocolate/wine factory as well as a macadamia farm which were nice additions to the tours. I also spent overnight in Lake Atitlan as well as camp at Volcano Acatanegro which was a heck of a way to end the tour. Along with Willy being an amazing guide for the entire week, Chris did an amazing job not only accommodating great hotels in Antigua as well as Lake Atitlan, my country required negative Covid 19 tests the week I was in Guatemala and Chris was able to get a doctor to come to my hotel and get the test done so I can return to my country. I highly recommend that if you visit Guatemala to have Old Town Outfitters plan your trip for you, you won't regret it! My recommendation for anyone doing this trip is to learn a little spanish as it would make the trip easier and to have a big backpack if you choose to do the camping trip!

When I started planning my honeymoon in November I sent two emails. Alexander (Alex) from Amazilla Travel responded within 24 hours. I didn't know how lucky I was at the time.

I told him what I was interested in and off we went. We looked at attractions, activities, budget, time allotment, value, etc. From the start, and throughout the entire trip, Alex was a phone call away to answer any question, big or small, or to offer a suggestion. We went to Tamarindo for 6 nights, Arenal for 4, and ended in Manuel Antonio for 4. His expertise allowed us to maximize our time and utilize our budget to have the best experience possible. Zip lining, white water rafting, boat safari, hanging bridges, scuba diving, rental car, accommodations. Everything was incredible. We couldn't be any happier. Thanks Alex and Pura Vida! We can't wait for the return trip!

We miss Morocco and our amazing guide Abdel and Karim, our always smiling driver! Abdel arranged a magical trip for us, a true experience and not simply a prescribed list of sights. The highlight of our trip was our 2-nights camping in the Sahara at Tiziri Camp. The camp is run by Akmed with his team of friendly helpers/amazing musicians. After delicious dinners we would sit around the fire listening to live music played by Akmed and his crew. Fantastic! We had many memorable discussions under the starry sky and I happily celebrated an unforgettable birthday there. We also visited a nomad home and rode camels at sunset, heard the music of Mali... thank you Akmed! We have visited Morocco before but this trip taught us a great deal more and deepened the experience immeasurably.

My friend and I had such a wonderful and memorable time in Cartagena and Santa Marta. Margoth did an amazing job organizing and suggesting activities, transportation, hotels, and restaurants. Everything went so smoothly. She was even available during our stay and would check up on us. She is very knowledgeable on creating out perfect vacation. I wanted to visit Cerro Kennedy which not many tourist hike and she was able to make arrangements last minute as I was not sure what traveling would be like at a peak of COVID.

Juan Carlos was our tour guide and driver while we Santa Marta. I highly recommend him as well if you plan on visiting Santa Marta. He is very professional, kind and knowledgeable. The personal touches and details made a big difference.

Thank you both for an amazing vacation!

Wow we can't say enough good things about Randall and the trip he created for us. From start to finish it was amazing. It was exactly what we wanted and he even arranged some things we didn't even know we wanted that were perfect additions. During the trip, we made a few modifications like extending our time at the beach and upgrading our rooms and he took care of all of those things efficiently and professionally with exceptional communication. I can't recommend his services enough. THANK YOU RANDALL!

What can I say? Words just don’t do an experience like we had any justice. It was a breathtaking, sweeping view of a beautiful country rich in religious, cultural, historical and geographical wonders. Abdellah, our guide, and Mohamed, our driver (more importantly our good friends) took us on the trip of a lifetime. With Covid, the flights were a little tricky and we missed the first day of our scheduled tour. They were super flexible and accommodating and fixed our tour without any issues. When we arrived they were both there to greet us with smiling faces and a nice air conditioned car. We went to Chefchouen, the blue pearl of Morocco, Fes, Skoura Oasis, the Sahara Desert and Marrakech. (We had to skip Casablanca because of our flights.) We drove the whole way to each place. Abdellah and Mohamed pointed out all the details along the way and answered all of our questions. We ate amazing local food and experienced life like it is for the locals. Our Riads (little bed and breakfasts made out of old homes that are like mansions) were amazingly beautiful and unique at each stopping point. If you choose to go to Morocco, you have to go to the Sahara. It’s a must. We stayed at TIZIRI camp and were lucky enough to have the place to ourselves. It was magical. Please use Oroginal travels for your plans. A trustworthy company that will make your trip exactly what you want and need. Thank you guys. 🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦❤️❤️❤️🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

What can I say? This trip was truly magnificent and everything I dreamed Egypt would be. Safe, secure and incredibly tailor made just for us. The customer service was exemplary and our guide was a master Egyptologist, Mohamed. He has a true passion for his people’s history and an incredible educational background as well. We started in Luxor on a cruise aboard the Senesta St George Nile Cruise boat. It was absolutely magical cruising along the Nile. Very clean, well appointed and lots and lots of food! Luxor itself is so jam packed with ruins that it would take months to see them all. We were able to see a few and the highlight for us was Karnak temple. Awe inspiring is the only way to describe it. Mohammed thoughtfully showed us the important aspects of each ruin. We learned how to decipher some hieroglyphics and also speak some Arabic with him. We went to Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Kom Ombo Temple and many more with Mohammed as our guide. It was an absolute pleasure. We have a friend for life in Luxor, Egypt now. Anyone from age 6-96 would love a tour with him. Next we went back to Cairo and visited the pyramids of Giza and it was truly surreal. All of our accommodations were beautiful. We were whisked from destination to destination with a private driver, security and guide. We even had a coordinator at the airport. Our coordinator spoke English and Spanish which was great too! As someone that usually plans their own trips and does everything by themselves it was a breath of fresh air to have EVERYTHING done for us. At the end of our trip, Sherif, the owner, even came by our hotel to meet us. What a gentleman. Loved this trip with all our hearts! ❤️🇪🇬🇺🇸❤️ Thank you Sherif, Dunes and Beyond, Mohamed and all the people that served us with the utmost care in this trip.

Randall made a great itinerary we were both very pleased

Great great experience! Seamless and magical.

Our trip to Myanmar was our second month-long trip arranged through kimkim and once we are able to travel again, we will be booking a third!

All of our guides provided us with more information than expected and there were new discoveries every day.

Our countryside biking and nunnery lunch in Mandalay was very peaceful, but the bikes provided were far from comfortable for us. We loved the experience, but suffered later.

Bagan was breathtaking and the hotel was very special. I didn't feel comfortable handling an e-motorcycle, so I hopped on the back of our guides bike while my husband drove his own. We made so many wonderful discoveries in Bagan including a cooking class with May. We had a tour of the market and then were given a basket and money to buy any ingredients we wanted for our meal. I was worried about the language difference, but the market vendors were so kind. We stopped for a tea before going to May’s house to cook our meal. So much fun! Our boat trip on the Irrawaddy River at sunset completed the day.

My personal favourite point in the trip was our time spent in Kalaw with the elephants at the Green Valley Elephant Camp, a retirement home for former logging elephants. We interacted with the elephants by feeding them, touching them and then bathing them in the river. The time spent with them in the river will stay with me forever!

Our guide, Thwe Wai Soe and driver for this part of the trip were the best that we have ever experienced!

We traveled by so many different means of transportation, had so many different experiences and stayed at wonderful accommodations. Well done, Myanmar Pure!

We had a wonderful vacation in Costa Rica! Every site we visited was stunningly beautiful. The side trips to the coffee and living farms were interesting and fun to experience.

Alex and Alejandro (local specialist) made every effort to understand what we were looking for and did an amazing job planning out the itinerary in detail. I had a mix of phone/email interactions to finalize our plans.

I cannot say enough good things about Alejandro our guide. He was fantastic! He was incredibly flexible and creative to deal with the situations on the ground between the Covid restrictions and protests that were going on in various parts of the country. He took us to a range of interesting eateries where we experienced tasty local food.

Costa Rica is taking Covid seriously. Masks are very widely used and you have to wash your hands before entering any place. We are in the early 60ish age group and felt that we were not being put at risk.

We were one of the first international travelers that the country was seeing in seven months. They warmly welcomed us and were very appreciative that we were visiting.

For those of you thinking about going to Cost Rica, jump in! You will have a fantastic holiday with warm, positive memories in the year of Covid.

Ibrahim and his team organized a custom 4 day trip for our family of 5 (myself, husband and children ages 17, 10, 10)--pick-up from Hurghada, then Luxor 2 days, flight to Cairo where we stayed 2 days. Great care and excellent organization throughout the trip. What we liked the best:
• Very knowledgeable and friendly guides---both Ahmed and Nour were excellent, really enjoyed their stories & description of sites visited.
• Drivers & cars were also very good and felt safe driving with them throughout the 4 days.
• Luxor sites selection was excellent—we liked everything—the tombs, the temples and the museum.
• The Sofitel Winter palace hotel was a very memorable experience, I had a very special feeling after staying at that hotel.
• In Cairo---the pyramides and the Sphinx tours were great as well
• The addition of the park / botanical garden on Sunday was really nice---we enjoyed very much spending the Sunday afternoon there.
• I liked the visits to stone and perfume shops in Luxor and Papyrus shop in Cairo----in the future, would be great the guides to mention these upfront as well as coach against vendors over selling at the historic sites prior to us arriving there

What I did not like so much:
• The trip to Fayoum was not worth the time---when you present it as the offer it would be helpful in the future to say how long the drive would be, as I thought much shorter distance based on no. of km. While it was quite nice to see the waterfall in the desert, it was not worth the drive.
• The cruise on the river Nile in the last night----atmosphere was OK, but we were the only tourists with the rest of the boat local people. The biggest challenge was covid risk---if I knew the boat was indoors with many people we would have not done it.

What should be done differently next time:
• Might be good to include some of the dinners in the organized package, otherwise, we would be forced to only eat in the evening at the hotel, which is not so interesting. So offering the meal add-ons as a choice might be taken up by many people
• It would have been good to know ahead of time that you have this very strict bureaucracy of reporting the trip to the tourism police and thus no changes can be made---if we knew that, we maybe have spent more time before finalizing the schedule to confirm exactly what we want and what we did not want in the trip (eg visit of the citadel or mosques etc)
• It was a bit scary and unnerving to have the armed security in the car with the police car following us everywhere. Again, learning this before the trip would have been helpful---in the first night went travelling from Hurghada to Luxor I was quite scared whether a terrorist attack warning was issued as I did not expect all the security. Later we got used to it and felt quite good to have all this security attention on us.

Communication was great. Trip was well organized and everything went perfect. Thank you to Fez Travel and Mr Mehmet.

We travel all the time and much prefer local curated experiences. We would not have been able to have this once in a lifetime experience without Kimkim, Nabil, and Yassine. Nabil was our designated driver from Marrakech, Ourzzazate, the desert camping adventure and Fes but he was so much more. He looked after us with special care and attention the whole week in Morocco. When we had a special shopping request, he made it happen. When we had questions about local culture, he provided context. Really impressed with his professionalism and attention to detail - you’re in good hands with Nabil. The highlight of our trip were the off beaten paths - camp Chebi is a showstopper - it’s the ultimate glamming experience where you sit around a Bedouin camp fire and stargaze, after an epic camel ride, We met locals, wandered, shopped, hiked, and ate our way through Morocco. Look no further than this brilliant trip Yassine designed and Nabil implemented. Thank you!!! Alexandra and Peter

We took our dad on a birthday trip to Yellowstone and grand Tetons and Ben (and Kim Kim) did a great job identifying awesome accommodation options and taking into account that we did not want to spend the whole trip driving. As a bonus, our trip coincided with the start of guided ranger tours so the trip timing could not have been better.

Lodging at grand Tetons, suggestions in Jackson, and off the beaten path adventures such as trout lake made a big difference in our trip. Kim Kim (and Ben) did a great job Taking the edge off all the planning and research that would have normally been involved in this type of trip.

Great Trip to Chile - February

Nicholas helped us to organise a great itinerary in Chile at very short notice due to a change in holiday destination!

During our trip we visited Santiago, Vina del Mar, the Atacama desert and then down to Patagonia;. The tours and guides were all fantastic and we managed to fit a lot in in the 10 days we had available and felt like we had seen a lot of Chile by the end of our trip.

The stand out experiences were seeing the geysers in Atacama, visiting Magdalena Island with the penguins and viewing amazing glaciers in Patagonia.

Nicholas was always extremely helpful and available to answer any questions we had; the expert planning meant that everything went really smoothly - overall a big thumbs up!

Chile is such a vast country that next time we visit we would plan to focus on Patagonia and spend some time hiking in the national parks.

Thank you,
Alice and Andy

Sangita, Bipin were wonderful - they were generous with their time, friendly, and looked after my brother and I very well. Every aspect of our trip was planned well and we knew that they were always available to help if we needed anything. Cannot recommend anyone more. We spent 9 days trekking the Tamang heritage trail followed by the Langtang trek with our guide Palsang and our Porter Kazu, both organised by Sangita. Trekking with knowledgable and friendly experts ensured our safety and made the experience much more enjoyable. My brother and I plan to return to Nepal one day and plan to organise any trip we book with Sangita!

Well organized trip, thanks to Maria and Dmitri. Transports were smooth and punctual with excellent drivers. Our driver in Athens was extremely helpful. Host hotels were clean, comfortable, and accommodating. The farm tour in Megalochori was a surprise and delight and our host guides were excellent. A bit more information with regard to this farm for review purposes would be helpful. Thanks again!

It was very easy to plan our trip with the trip planner. We were able to choose the types of things that we wanted to do like hiking & eliminate those that we weren’t interested in doing such as no shopping. We could also choose the areas that we wanted to visit. Randall coordinated everything so we didn’t have to worry about transportation or guides. It was all included. It’s a great way to explore such a beautiful country. Our hotels were all very nice. I would recommend KimKim to arrange a trip to Costa Rica.