Valparaiso, Viña, Wine: Chile's Coastal & Valley Escape from Santiago

Leonardo, our guide was amazing. He treated us like family and was culturally astute about Chile’s history and that of Valparaiso. He went out of his way to accommodate us by going to our pace and answering all our questions. From pick up to drop off Leonardo was like a first class concierge tending to all our needs. And yes, his English was very good.

Our guide Julio, did an excellent job of bringing this beautiful seaport city to life with facts about its history, anecdotes of its citizens and why this seafaring town is so important. We walked many districts, saw the city from many perspectives and truly got a wonderful sense of the communities who are served both in Vina Del Mar as well as Valparaiso. Our tour visited a bucolic winery in Casablanca that served local wines that preserved the region’s unique climate through its distinctive flavors. A wonderful tour guide and a wonderful sampling of life outside Santiago.

We had such an amazing time on this tour! From start to finish, everything was well-organized and stress-free. Our guide was incredibly knowledgeable, friendly, and made the history and culture of the area come alive with great stories and fun facts.

Antonio was the absolute best guide! We had a great day and I am definitely recommending this trip to others when they visit Santiago. The streets of Valparaiso are gorgeous, and Antonio did a great job of explaining the murals, their meanings, and their history in *4 LANGUAGES* (we had English, Spanish, Italian, and French speakers on our tour). We saw sea lions, and The wine at Emiliana is great - my ONLY complaint is that we didn't get to learn more about the production of the wine, but then again, this wasn't a wine-specific tour we booked. One suggestion for future travelers: during the lunch stop, head towards the water. We stayed in the middle of town, and while the food was fantastic, we learned too late that there were much better views for eating than we experienced (this is not the fault of Antonio - this is just a personal opinion).

Guide did not speak English well and mispronounced many words. Very frustrating as hard to understand. Used his phone constantly to show things that couldn’t be seen from back of bus!

Apparently, this company doesn't operate their own vans and guides. Instead they just book inquiries onto whatever free lance tour has openings. This means there is no quality control. Our guide, Nacho, was unfortunately not up to the task. His English is very rough and trying to understand him as he talked endlessly was exhausting. Then he would walk really fast leaving the ground struggling to keep up. When he would talk about a point on the tour he wouldn't wait for the group but I stead would just fire off a few words to whomever happened to be close, usually only two or three people out of the eleven in the group. Overall. He did not create a positive feeling in the group nor the friendly sense of bonding that happened with all the other group tour I took during my stay. Seems the best way to avoid this kind of tour fiasco is to book with one of the more established agencies. Oh, almost forgot... the tour never showed up the first time...wasted a whole day of my vacation. I let them rebook me because it was already paid for but then I had to remind them the evening before the rebooked tour or they wouldn't have shown for that one either.

There are so many things that can be improved on this day trip: - guide needs to speak better English and have better history knowledge - tour was mixed Spanish and English guests: really bad as you loose a lot of time doing dual descriptions. Stick to either English or Spanish - listening to your guests is a must: don’t just focus on schedule without considering what your guests suggest - don’t force ‘group’ picture taking, we are all strangers and are not much into ‘group’ activities Best part of the day trip was Emiliana vineyard, really amazing wines.

Very nice views guide took his time and was very knowledgeable Gave us a good synopsis of history of to the of cities. Tour was very Educational and informative .views were very nice. City has a bohemian feel Highly recommended

Very informative, our guide was enthusiastic to show us around and answered all our questions. Highly recommend!

We had the most wonderful day with our guide, Rose, who showed us so many cool places. It was the best day we had in Santiago. Thank you, Rose!