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Sucre Activities

Candelaria Tours

1 reviews | Write a review

Good for: wasting your time

Not good for: All tourists, Tours, alternative tours, Cultural Tours, custom tours

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Lonely Planet review for Candelaria Tours

One of the most established and professional travel agencies in Sucre offering a variety of tours around Bolivia. They also have participatory programs where visitors can work with indigenous communities, especially with textiles. Arranges travel and accommodations. Fluent in English.

 

Traveller reviews for Candelaria Tours (1)

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    Terrible

    onefishtwofish does not recommend this,

    Candelaria Tours' two-day trip to Candelaria and Tarabuco, staying at a hacienda was quite honestly the worst tour I have been on in ten years of regular trips to South America.

    It all started to go wrong within minutes, when our tour guide took us to the house of Candelaria Tours' owner, who then piled in the car, along with her very elderly, frail mother, in a zimmer frame. From then on, everything was dictated by her. It felt like we'd paid $200 each to join a family outing.

    First we went on a bewildering detour around town, picking up stuff. Setting off well over an hour later, we finally made to to Tarabuco - where again we had to sit in the car for an hour while the owner set up stuff at her restuarant there and did a bit of shopping.

    When we finally got to the hacienda, our room wasn't ready so we just had to sit around for another hour while someone changed the bedsheets and bought in a bucket of brown, muddy water with which we could flush the toilet.

    Then we had to wait around for *another* hour while the owner made lunch. Whilst the food was nice, it was horribly uncomfortable as the owner's frail mother sat at the end of the table holding a bowl and spoon, crying out for some help. We sat there in silence, embarassed that no one was helping her.

    It wasn't until 4.30pm (some six hours after leaving our hotel) that we actually started any kind of tour.

    Turns out there really isn't much to see in Candelaria; it's a small and quite boring village. We were back at the hacienda within an hour, with nothing to do. I played Scrabble on my phone, which was probably the highlight of my day.

    The hacienda is described as "beautiful and colonial" in the LP book. It's actually rundown and shabby, with a fountain in the centre spraying a sad trickle of brown water.

    Dinner was almost as bad as lunch, the highlight being the time the owner nearly wet herself laughing when an old lady who was there helping her nearly set fire to the flour sack she was wrapped in to keep warm. We didn't think it was very funny.

    I was grateful to go to bed in the end. The people there freaked me out a bit so I pushed the desk up against the door in case anyone tried to get in.

    Day 2 didn't get any better. We agreed to have breakfast at 7.30am so we could get to the market in Tarabuco by 9am (which was the whole reason we wanted to go). At 8, we got in the car. At 8.50, we finally left, after the owner piled her elderly mother and three other people into the car. We didn't get to the market until almost 11 as they couldn't find anywhere to park.

    While we missed the best bit of the market - ie our whole reason for visiting - we were pleased to learn the President was due to visit that day. We got a great vantage point from which to catch his speech - only for the tour guide to track us down and insist that lunch was ready *right now* and we *must* come. So we missed that too.

    All in, it was not only an expensive waste of time, but one in which we felt bored and uncomfortable. We choose private tours as we're short on time and like to dictate the pace of a trip. In this case, everything was dictated by the owner and the needs of her elderly mother.

    It also lacked the major elements of a tour; namely, a schedule and series of things to see. It wasn't a tour. At best it was a homestay, and not even a good one.

    Avoid.

    Good for: wasting your time

    Not good for: All tourists, Tours, alternative tours, Cultural Tours, custom tours, village tours

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