Kimkim Trip Reviews

I have traveled in Peru on my own and my experience was that there was one difficulty after another. However with KimKim, almost everything went smoothly and our experience was beautiful. People at KimKim must have worked very hard to make the trip go so well.
The food KimKim chose was great, the hotels were wonderful, the guides and drivers showed up on time. Our guides Jorge and Juan were knowledgeable, courteous, and personable, providing us with many insights into ancient Peruvian cultures.
Anne, who was our tour director, was very flexible in designing our trip as we had to postpone the trip 3 weeks before the scheduled date and reschedule for a month later. We decided to add a few more days to our trip after the postponement, and Anne graciously and gracefully added to our itinerary seamlessly. She also arranged for us to go to places a little off the beaten path such as Aspero, (which I highly recommend as the tour there gave us so much insight into the Caral culture.)
The only thing KimKim asked us to do on our own was to buy plane tickets to and from Lima to Cusco. Somehow LATAM got my wife's last name wrong, assuming that it was my own, and supplied us with bogus passport numbers. (The customer service agent at LATAM said the bogus numbers were due to us having purchased the tickets in the United States. This does not make sense to me.) It took my wife and I three hours talking to the LATAM central office to correct these difficulties. Given that at least the bogus passport numbers were predictable and the assumption about my wife's last name probable, KimKim might take it upon themselves to purchase these tickets for their customers to obviate these difficulties. However, that only made plain to us what a marvelous job the personnel at KimKim had done in making our trip comfortable, delightful, and extraordinary.

My husband and I visited Peru for our honeymoon in October. Jesus and his team at Peruvian Soul planned the perfect trip! We began our trip in Lima, traveled to Paracas, and then returned to Lima before making our way to Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu. Having all of our transfers and transportation pre-arranged by Jesus/Peruvian Soul allowed us to relax and focus on enjoying the sites and culture.

Peruvian Soul’s tour guides and affiliated tour experts provided invaluable guidance, insights, and local experiences to enhance our trip. In Cusco and the Sacred Valley, we had the same guide for several days, Julio. His spirit and pride in the local culture and history is contagious! Our Andean Wedding was one of the special highlights that Peruvian Soul and Julio coordinated for us. It was truly a spiritual, unique, and unforgettable moment that connected us with the beautiful landscape and living history of the Andean people.

Another highlight was hiking Machu Picchu. Even though it was raining, our guide Eddy brought a positive attitude to the day and showed us a great time. We also recommend people see the less visited Paracas and Ballestas Islands, where we had a helpful guide, Alexander. This area is very remote and filled with beautiful vistas of deserts and wildlife, such as penguins, sea lions, cormorants, and terns. In Lima, we enjoyed exploring what is a modern, cosmopolitan capital city. The food was awesome throughout Peru, but especially in Lima. For a high-end treat, Kjolle located next to the famous Central restaurant, our dinner there was one of the best meals of our lives.

Each day in Peru brought a new adventure. Now we know why everyone recommends to pack layers—each day we experienced a wide range of temperatures. Also, note that the sun is very strong even on chilly days.

Overall, we had an amazing honeymoon and would recommend Peruvian Soul to anyone visiting Peru for the first time!

We want to thank Kripa for arranging this awesome unforgettable vacation. This goes beyond my expectations. Love the Hotel both the Dwarika's in Kathmandu and the Pavilions in Pokhara. Walking in the streets of Kathmandu is an experience and seeing the UNESCO sites (Pashupatinath, Boudanath, and Swayambunath). Being on the off the beaten path Trekking is also great, with varied terrain, and scenery and scanty tourists. Our guide Suma made our trek interesting who also carried my backpack. And of course our porter Mikma, carrying our load. Tadapani and Dobato and Ghorepani sunrise is spectacular. What an experience sleeping in those teahouses. But the highlight of this trek is the Muldai viewpoint trek with spectacular, breathtaking view of the mountains so close. Interesting to see the local (Gurung culture), and getting inside the shepherd's hut. Overall wonderful experiences. Almost all the people we met are very nice. Well, I hope to see Nepal again maybe during Spring in the near future before I get too old. Thanks again Kripa for the wonderful trip and excellent service.
From Cesar Alcid.

Our experience with Kimkim was excellent. We began researching our October, 2019 trip to Morocco in March of 2019 and came upon Kimkim. We have never used a travel company in the past. Instead, we do all of the planning ourselves. However, due to the amount of driving, language issues, and general lack of familiarity with Morocco, we decided to consider taking a different approach. From the very beginning, our communications with Abdellah were prompt and informative. He was quick to outline an itinerary that would get the most out of our 13 days in Morocco. We were able to adjust the itinerary ahead of our trip so that it included everything we wanted to see and do. Abdellah was even very helpful during the trip when we had a minor issue that needed to be resolved. The communication from Abdellah was one of the most impressive things about Kimkim. The other was our guide, Ayoub Nibil. There is no question that he made our trip extra special! He was friendly, thoughtful, knowledgeable and eager to share everything he could about his country. He is also a talented musician and we shared many conversations around our common love of music and introducing each other to some of our favorite artists. Ayoub and his big smile were always there to greet us each morning. He and our driver Mohammed took great care of us. We strongly recommend Kimkim, especially if you are traveling to a country where you haven’t been before and need some assistance with planning and executing an exciting itinerary. Our advice is to be as specific as possible with what you want out of your vacation and get all of your questions answered in advance. That way, they can tailor the itinerary to you and surprises will be minimized. We will look to Kimkim in the future when we need their expertise to help get the most out of our vacation.

Megan was able to provide a nice 2-day trip on very short notice. I went to Meknes, which is much less known and at this time, was not full of tourists. My driver got me to my guide, Rachid, and we went to walk around the medina and markets. He was very knowledgeable and helped me to purchase some spices. Then I was taken to a family just outside of the city. They were lovely and took me to the local market with them to buy ingredients for lunch. We even had to go around the flock of sheep that just ran into the square.
They showed me how to make the traditional foods such as mint tea, Moroccan salads and of course, tagine. Then we ate. A very welcoming and enjoyable experience.

I stayed overnight in the old city at a place called Riad D'Or. Inside the maze of the town but not too far to get lost. The riad itself was 3 homes combined and was itself a maze to get around. Charming and very authentic.

Lastly was a trip on the return to Volubilis, the ruins of an ancient Roman city. Very interesting and some beautiful mosaics still remain.

All in all a really nice side trip.

In October/November 2019 two sort of old Australians (>65 y.o.) with heaps of hiking experience undertook the Three Passes Trek with our guide Dafuri Sherpa and porter Bimba Sherpa. Web searching had led us to the kimkim site and we had an absolutely trouble free time organising and booking our trek. Ngima Dorji Sherpa was always able to quickly answer our questions and provided us with flexible booking options which led to us taking a private trek at only a little extra cost.

We were well looked after from the moment we were met at Kathmandu airport. Dafuri was a wonderful guide. He quickly summed up our walking experience and interests and was able to take us through the Three Passes without mishap and with a few extra side trips thrown in as well. I particularly enjoyed the day walk we had from Chukhung to Island Peak Base Camp via Imja Tsho - the lake that is forming behind terminal moraines and which could catastrophically fail and lead to severe flooding downstream.

I also enjoyed our two nights at Gokyo with a walk up Gokyo Ri on a perfect sunny afternoon followed by a day walk beside Ngozumba Glacier to Gyazumba where there are wonderful views of Cho Oyo, Everest, Makalu and everything in between. We crossed Renjo La the next day. What a feast!

So thank you Dafuri for your strength, good humour and expert knowledge of the track and accommodation options. We also enjoyed learning from you about Nepalese customs and society. Bimba, you were also so strong and helpful.

Our trekking trip to Nepal was a wonderful experience and we cannot thank enough Ngima and his team for making it such a success.

Peter Hatherly, Sydney Australia

We truly loved our driving tour around Morocco with our ever helpful and friendly driver and guide, Karim. Everything was organised seamlessly by Abdellah, staying in lovely riads, a posh cave room and an even posher desert tent. It was fascinating to visit diverse and vibrant cities such as Marrakesh, Fes, Tangier, Casablanca and Rabat where we felt very welcomed. The landscape of Morocco was endlessly engaging: high mountain peaks, rolling slopes of olive groves, oak and cedar forests, desert and plains, and a beautiful coastline. Activities never before carried out included traditional drumming sessions ( addictive), and evening and early morning camel treks (happily with a night for the legs to recover in between). We are already planning to return and explore further and would not hesitate to use Kim Kim and their specialist Abdellah, who organised such a brilliant trip and was always contactable and responsive.

We arranged a five day, four night trip to Jordan. We saw the Dead Sea, Little Petra, Petra for a full day, Mt. Nebo, Kerak, Madaba, and a half day in Jerash before returning to the airport. Our driver, Badr, was incredible. He was very flexible with leave times and helped to tweak times at the destinations if needed. He was prompt and extremely courteous. The hotels Carmen had booked were perfect for the trip. Carmen was also prompt with responses and easily walked us through all of the details of the trip. If I had an email question, she was always there with an answer. I would highly recommend using Kimkim to book a trip.

A few comments.

Perfect Hotels ! Authentic , clean , good breakfast , very nice service. ( Bantu and Punta Faro at Isla
Mucura )

Uncomfortable feeling in transfers and overall pick ups as I did not have direct contact - until I asked for WhatsApp contact and even with that not always responded to in real time. I ended up talking to Laura once as we planned - internet communications is uncomfortable as I can’t reference back as I can with emails.

Overall all transfer were fine, as was the Cartagena city tour with Ingrid.

The fishing village was a disappointment . Both the trip and the guide. Inexperienced young kid , poor English and the trip itself - was not clear for us. We expected something else hence a real disappointment. All tourist should be aware this is a very poor place , where I was afraid ... and full of bugs , mosquitos etc.... definitely not for us Had we understood.

Isla Mucura is a unknown paradise. It was a amazing choice and we should have spent more brights there and less in. Cartagena. Had Laura knew us better , she may have advised us as such.

Thank you again for the opportunity.

We unfortunately had to change our plans at the last minute due to the protests in La Paz however Malenka was super helpful in changing our plans and giving us options to choose from.

We arrived in Casablanca for a 7 day Moroccan land excursion in and around northern morocco touching base and driving around in multiple locations. our driver was specifically picked for us from the tour company organizer per our requirements. The choice of our tour guide was in fact perfect, Ismail was his name. He was young, experienced, knowledgeable, fun and professional. We felt very comfortable with him and appreciated his clever sense of humor, it added to the experience of Moroccan journeys. It appeared that the entire country knew him, he was quite popular and well-known to his benefit. I highly recommend Ismail to any single traveler our multiple person groups who want to see any or all parts of Morocco especially those who want knowledgeable information as they are safely driven by Ismail. When we go to Morocco again we will definitely have Imail as our guide again, we have a friend for life.

From back home in Australia, our contact Amanda in Kathmandu was fantastic!
She was always readily available to help with all of our, (many) questions along the way. From accommodation and itinerary, to connecting us to a city guide, as well as our amazing trekking guide, Priscilla❤️, we couldn't be happier with all that was offered.
Amanda was professional, courteous and lovely and helped us to enjoy our trip of a lifetime, including playing her part in a secret marriage proposal at the Larke Pass!
As tough as the Trek was, (chest infection upping the challenge even more...), the overall adventure has been incredible. Thank you Amanda !

This was our first experience with kimkim and our first trip to Greece. We used kimkim for this trip because it was a ‘last minute’ decision to go and simply didn’t have the time to do all the planning ourselves. Overall, it was an excellent experience. Not only was it a big timesaver for planning, the level of service throughout was excellent, incorporating activities into the trip that we would otherwise probably would not have included. Chris from Travel12 in Athens worked with us on the itinerary, offering recommendations and demonstrating a real interest in finding activities aligned to our interests in hiking, sightseeing and gaining an appreciation for local culture and history. Maria, our guide for the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum in Athens was outstanding. She was very knowledgeable and provided real insight into Greek mythology and history. A highlight of our trip was hiking the Samaria Gorge on Crete. Travel12 made the arrangements for a privately guided hike with Linda. She was clearly an expert on the 16k Samaria Gorge with over 120 hikes to her credit. She guided us at a pace that suited our abilities as well as objectives for sightseeing and photography. An absolutely awesome experience! Overall, we were thrilled with the local support from Chris and his team, who were very responsive and communicated regularly to make sure the trip was unfolding according to plan. We would recommend kimkim and Chris and the Travel12 team for Greece without hesitation.

Awesome experience!
Ngima was extremely helpful in helping us organizing the logistics and planning our a trip tailored to our needs. He was always prompt in reply all our questions before the trip.

As soon we landed at Kathmandu, we've been very well taken care of by Lapka, who helped us with transportation pick-ups and preparation of our EBC trekking trip The day before the start of our trek, Ngima came to our hotel (along with our trek guide) to do a detailed briefing of our trekking trip and logistics making sure that we're comfortable with everything. And btw, the SUV arranged from Ngima's company for our land-transfer/transportation is a pretty new vehicle, which was nice because due to the Kathmandu local airport maintenance, the flight to Lukla (starting point of our EBC trek) can't be from Kathmandu but Ramechapp instead, which is 4hrs drive away on windy, sometimes a bit rugged, mountain roads.

On the trek, our guide Angolo took care of us very well. We have some relatively heavy camera equipments (lenses and such) and he helped with carrying those in his back pack all along, and even carried my wife's backpack when she wasn't feeling too well one day.
After the trekking, we spent a couple more days in Kathmandu to unwind. And before we leave to the airport, Ngima came to our hotel for de-brief of our trip before dropping us off to the airport

Overall we are very satisfied with the trip and I would highly recommend Ngima to whoever wants to arrange a trekking trip in Nepal!

The trip to Argentina was incredible! Such convenience of having all of our transport coordinated for us. We loved the tango dinner show experience and our tour of Buenos Aires was fantastic. They accommodated the needs of my kids by scheduling us an earlier dinner tango show and a van service for our city tour which made sightseeing much easier for our family. Everything coordinated for us in Iguazu was excellent as well. I really liked Say Heque which was the tour company in Argentina that they used. Our tour guide Laura was friendly, warm, knowledgeable, and her English was perfect. I really liked the games and kid facts she incorporated into the tour. My only suggestion for improvement for Kim Kim and for Mery would be that they should recommend “kid friendly” itineraries and time schedules from the beginning...I really had to specifically ask for this rather than our agent suggesting things from the start. My experience using in Kim Kim for my trip in Ecuador was different in the sense that right from the start they made sure we had everything booked that was kid appropriate. No big deal this time around, as Mery was happy to help and was very flexible, and overall everything was excellent!!! Thank you!

What a fantastic trip! Carmen put a perfect plan together for our family of four, accommodating for all that we had asked for. We had an incredible guide, Khadra, take us through Bethlehem and Jerusalem. She made the trip so much more valuable than we could have done on our own. She gave us personal stories, histories, and my kids (ages 6 and 8) loved her so very much--she was able to make it adult AND kid friendly (not an easy task). The country of Israel/Palestine is beautiful and full of rich heritages. We enjoyed terrific food at Black Pepper in Bethlehem and we also enjoyed a wonderful lunch at an Austrian joint in the Old City. The tour buses in the area were no issue for our guide as she knew her way through the cities and through the lines! We were able to see and visit all the holy sites as well as many other sites (like Banksy's paintings). We highly recommend KimKim travel and Carmen as a specialist. We were able to check this amazing experience off our bucket list and have all the pictures to remember this special place because of KimKim travel. Thank you all so much!

Costa Rica is a beautiful Country. The guides were kind, the zip line experience was amazing, and the hot springs hotel was really pretty. I enjoyed kayaking in the river a lot. I was disappointed in the 3rd hotel for adults only; especially for a group of girls. It was highly geared toward couples and I feel we were treated differently there then the other places. I found a hotel that we moved to for the last 2 nights called the Carriblue which was my favorite one. I like the space, jungle and it was much roomier. Unfortunately it cost 500$ that I didn’t expect to spend but we felt highly uncomfortable at the other place and had to move. The last day was difficult with all the shuttle driving; it took 2 hours longer then we were told and we sadly missed our plane back to Liberia and had to rent a car. I felt we all were pretty positive and made the best of it, enjoying the natural beauty of Costa Rica. I believe we took good care of those guides/locals that helped us to enjoy our vacation. I’m not sure I would do anything as busy next time (going from place to place) and I’d like much less time actually “traveling.”

Hamzah my guide was super punctual and helpful.
Petra was the highlight and the whole 6 hours I spent there was tremendous
The Dead Sea was extraordinary 30% salt! Just dont get it in your eyes!
The Holiday Inn resort was well chosen
Wadi Rum spectacular - like Monument Valley but 10 times bigger!
BBG Lunch in the desert shade allowed time to reflect on my trip.

Our driver, Hassan, was excellent. He was a great driver, knowledgeable and an amiable companion for us. All of the hotels and riads were good. The overall organization plan was well conceived and we enjoyed the activities experienced. We especially enjoyed our camel ride and evening in the desert tent camp.

We had a fantastic trip with Yassine's help. Hassan was an incredible driver and became a close friend. He is funny, smart, honest and has the biggest heart.

Our accommodations were spectacular and activities well planned.

If you want to see real Morocco with amazing people reach out to Yassine!