Mexico, Belize & Guatemala tour, Mayan encounter

The very ethos of our style of travel is responsible; small groups on fully escorted tours, experiencing the very best of a region, a culture and a landscape, with a friendly local hand guiding the way. Our itineraries are designed to give our travelers real life experiences without compromising the part of the world we are exploring; to travel responsibly is at the heart of our commitment as a global tour operator.

This brilliant no-frills itinerary takes in the highlights of the ancient Mayan civilisation, giving travelers the opportunity to visit sites in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Focusing on low impact and even positive impact travel, this trip supports local industry and helps provide employment throughout the regions of Central America we visit. You’ll stay in small, locally owned budget accommodation, from hotels to a unique homestay in the famous market town of Chichicastenango (Chichi) and be accompanied throughout by a professional local group leader. There will be the opportunity during the trip to rent bikes and snorkelling equipment in Tulum, try kite surfing in Caye Caulker, go birdwatching in Tikal and buy local handicrafts at the enormous Chichi Market. Your group leader will help with all these arrangements and their local knowledge will be vital in helping you get the best deal!

Meals on this trip are at your own expense giving all travelers freedom to choose the places you eat. When dining together, your group will eat in traditional, locally owned restaurants, and during the day will purchase food en route from local vendors and small cafes.

Travelers wishing to visit the Mayan ruins dotted across the region will find their entrance ticket to the sites helps fund conservation and restoration projects, while the local site guides also benefit from the opportunities tourism brings to their region.

Our emphasis on tour is real life experiences. To this end, on this journey you’ll mainly use local buses to get around, as well as being by far the best option environmentally, this offers great opportunity for cultural interaction with your fellow bus travelers. Due to safety concerns however we do not use the brightly painted ‘chicken buses’ that are a common sight throughout Central America, instead using more modern inter-city coaches.

As a company we are very aware of the negative effect carbon emissions have on our environment and as such operate a carbon neutral policy; offsetting the ground emissions of all our passengers on all our trips. On this particular journey that equates to 141kgs of carbon offset per passenger, per departure. We also offer all our travelers the opportunity to offset the cost of their international travel with us. Since 2007 we have offset over 45,000 tonnes of carbon emissions. That's equal to approximately the amount of carbon that 2,796,047 trees would absorb over 10 years, or taking over 4,753 passenger cars off the road for an entire year!

In addition to this we encourage all our passengers to take steps to ensure that their trip is environmentally responsible as possible. Your group leader will be on hand to assist with the appropriate disposal of rubbish en route, recycling wherever possible and we encourage all our travelers to use refillable water bottles with purification tablets rather than contributing to the rapidly escalating problem caused by the copious number of plastic bottles discarded globally on a daily basis.