Better than chancing the public bus - I recommend the jaunt to visit Kabah and Uxmal. Sammy was a great guide and provided honest insights and information. I could have passed on the Chocolate tour, although it never hurts to have chocolate. I signed up for the tour b/c options are sparse and sometimes unreliable for visiting these sights (and getting back!) using the public bus. Signing up for this tour made it easy, plus there was the bonus of the guided narrative and the opportunity to share the experience with others.

Good, but still room for improvement - This was the first tour we took in the Yucatan and was by far the best! While I have no complaints about our guide Samuel, the staff at Sol Turquesa where the meeting point is, seem to lack the most basic customer service skills and seem to only care about Mexican clients. And as some others have said, we drove 2 blocks to pick up another party, who literally could've walked to the meeting point. That being said, the tour itself wasn't bad. We arrived in Kabah first and our guide collected payment afterwards, so we could enjoy the site before other tour groups arrived. The best part was, you could climb the ruins. My only complaint here is that we didn't get taken to the famous corbelled arch. Our next stop was Uxmal. I did feel a little rushed at the Main Pyramid, but our guide later gave us 45 minutes to explore the less popular sections by ourselves. The site honestly isn't very big, and we did technically have enough time to go back to the areas we were taken to at the beginning, but we didn't feel like backtracking. So maybe some free time at the first sections would have been nice, but Samuel was very knowledgeable and gave great commentary throughout the entire tour, and even answered questions about other elements of Mexican culture. My main complaint at Uxmal was the payment method. We paid 95 pesos and tried to enter the site, only to be told by our guide that we need to pay another 400 something pesos at another window before we can enter. Our guide said it's because the local and foreign rates are different and have different taxes, but surely there could be some way to process everything in one transaction. Certainly would've been easier here for the guide to collect our money and buy the tickets himself, as everyone in our group was confused by this. My only other complaint was the lunch stop, which was a restaurant located at the site. Our guide disappeared, and had another client from our group not come for us, we wouldn't have known we can enter the restaurant. Then there was a lot of confusion and mix up regarding people's orders. Our guide 100% should have been present when our food was being served. We personally found the meal here very disappointing, though the others in our party seemed to enjoy it. I do feel the lunch stop was a bit long, and the time could have been better utilized to see more of Kabah and Uxmal. Afterwards, we were driven across the street to the Choco Story Museum. This seemed like one of those tourist trap places, and it was in some aspects (I question the authenticity of the Mayan ritual), but the place was very interesting, as they have replica huts, exhibits, animals and demonstrations. One piece of advice I will give, buy your chocolate at the airport. It's literally the same exact chocolate they sell at the museum for lower prices. All in all, we were fairly satisfied with this tour.

Good tour but biased guide - The lower rating is given only because of the bad tour guide Andreas. As such the operator was very nice - they picked me up and dropped me from/to the hotel even though it was not in the policy. The uxmal archaeological site was magnificent. But from beginning to end, Andreas kept ignoring my repeated request of explaining in English even though my booking clearly mentioned English speaking guide. At one point he joked about my religion (Hindu) which was outright racist and crude. Seeing the Mayan civilization in my own eyes was my childhood dream but because of his non cooperation of English explanation, my dream remained somewhat unfulfilled.