Incredible experience - Wonderful places, extraordinary experience, highly recommended, the trip from San Cristóbal to the places we visited and obviously the return trip was a little long, but it was completely worth it

The English guide was fantastic - You need a guide to understand this area. We are fortunate that the English guide had great knowledge and we had sufficient time to explore

Explore transport options without inclusions - We booked with Wayak Tours, but actually travelled with OTISA. We booked through TripAdvisor in advance and paid AUD$200 pp x 2 which included return transport, entry to three attractions, an English guide at Zona Arqueológica Palenque and a driver with English. Adequate time allowed at all attractions to explore - two hours at Agua Azul, 45 minutes at Misol-ha and two hours at Zona Arqueologica Palenque. We opted to travel one way San Cris. to Palenque and provided advice to the tour operator in advance. While on the tour it was apparent that other Spanish passengers only booked the transport and paid their own way into attractions and for meals. This would have been a more cost effective option for us, including the English guide at Palenque. Although the tour was very expensive, we weren’t expecting meals to be included, and we were surprised when breakfast was included. On the approach to lunch, our driver explained the lunch details to the Spanish passengers including costs. Then in English, the driver said we are stopping for lunch and promoted the restaurant as being wonderful with a grill. No mention of cost. We assumed lunch was included but didn’t confirmed - our mistake, particularly since the T&Cs stated lunch not included. We don’t normally eat at these type of establishments even if included, but on this occasion there were fresh steamed vegetables (gone cold) and a grill. So we each got a small bowl of vegetables and asked the cook to grill them on the hot plate. Later we were asked to pay the buffet price MXN240 pp (about AUD$21 pp). This added to the cost of the tour. The tour operator didn’t offer any discount for the one way transport. We had a nice day.

Torture in a bus. - The evening before the tour I received an email telling me we would be picked up 03:30hrs. Given at the time of booking the time quoted was 06:00. When I queried this with operator they gave me some spiel about unexpected and unpredictable road blocks. I queried this with the guide and driver and clearly it was total BS - there had been issues on this route for months and the earlier time had been the norm for those months. If I had been quoted a leaving time of 03:30 I would never have booked the tour in the first place. While the falls and Palenque were definitely worth seeing this tour is insane. The roads are plagued with literally hundreds of speed bumps, which the bus has to slow almost to a stop to pass, which probably at least doubles the journey time and gives you whiplash. We got back to the start point at 22:30 - 19 hours against advertised 12-14. Obviously driving at night in remote Chiapas presents its own issues, not least the threat of bandidos and robbery. We had to team up with several other buses in convoy and even had police escorts through some of the dodgier parts. The tour is totally misrepresented by the booking company who make no offer of refund when you pull them up on this. There is no way I would have booked this tour had the truth been presented in the description. The driver should never have been asked to drive for this amount of time. Caught him nodding a few times towards the end.