4 years ago
Oh where to begin with just how horrible our exper...
Oh where to begin with just how horrible our experience was! My husband and I wanted to do something special for our 25th anniversary and we decided on the Chilean Fjords trip. Our flights were made through Gohagan and that was our first mistake. We were originally on a flight that left from Miami but were moved to a flight from Texas because they said the connection to make our flight to Easter Island would have been too close. Well the flight from Miami arrived before the flight they bumped us to and caused us to miss our flight to Easter Island! When we got there the next day we were going to the museum... but it was closed. We ended up just driving around the island which was ok but you would think a local guide would have known when the museum was open. Then, in Santiago, our room had no air conditioning. We were told it would be fixed that day but it wasn t. We were rushed through the museum in Santiago. Time management seemed to be a problem for any land portion of our trip! There was a fabulous little local market in one of the squares. We were promised a little time to look around for souvenirs but that never happened. Despite being hurried through the museum and missing the market completely, we were 40 minutes late to our tour of the vineyard and we somehow lost our English speaking guide. On to Puenta Arenas! First the local guide snuck us into the cemetery through a back door because he didn t agree with the policy of charging a small fee to enter legally. Needless to say most of us were very uncomfortable with this, but not as uncomfortable as we were when we were caught and told to leave immediately! Next we were scheduled to see another museum... which ended up being closed that day! It was ridiculous considering how long we saved for this trip and how much we spent. Unexcusable, but not the end of our travel woes. To make up for the museum debacle we were supposed to have extra time in town to do some shopping and sightseeing. This turned out to be a whopping 10 minutes because the shops were closing. The next day, on the way to the ship, all our guide could do was talk about ranching and the ranches in his country. He would ignore any questions about the various monuments and statues. His English was very hard to understand but that didn t matter so much since he spent 90% of his time talking to Antionette who was in charge of the tour and the lucky people in the first 4 rows on the bus. Even with them he would make up answers to questions if he didn t know the answer! It was truly unbelievable and infuriating. At least our next stop was the ship. Everything there was fine.
Then we got to Puerto Natales. We and several others were given mixed messages on reception times. My husband and I, and several others, missed the receptions with whichever group we were traveling with because of this. The guide here, yet again, favored the couples in the first few rows of the bus with his attention and even took them to a special viewing spot that none of the other travelers got the chance to see. It was truly a horrible experience.
Antoinette was our group leader from Gohagan and she was the worst leader we have had the misfortune to work with. She was uncommunicative on things we needed to know on several occasions and a few times she was just plain rude. She changed plans and amended our itinerary without notice and seemed to have us running late a vast majority of the time. The icing on the cake was that my husband is a fluent Spanish speaker and was appalled to hear her saying ugly things about several people on our tour to the local guides. When he pulled her aside and explained that was completely unprofessional and out of line she ignored him- and me- for the rest of our trip.
When we got back to the states we contacted Gohagan about our experience. We had taken a few other tours with them and were sorely disappointed with this one. They had nothing to say to that and quit responding to us. Never using Gohagan again.
