Flavours & Traditions of the Algarve tour - We took the Flavours & Traditions tour. Wonderful to see the beautiful countryside and small towns. Our guide and driver, Luis, was really great: friendly, very knowledgeable, excellent driver. The cork factory tour in Sao Bras de Alportel and the small museum of castle ruins in Salir were very interesting. Highly recommend the tour.

10/10 - We had the Flavours and Traditions tour today and it was fantastic definitely recommend. The time flew by, a big part of this was our tour guide Michael, he never ran out of stories to tell and facts to give about our surroundings and about the sights we were seeing and more, a perfect tour guide for the perfect tour

Waste of our time - We started out in a small group in a small van - 8 persons - from Portimao. Our first stop was to the “local cake shop” consisted of ushering the 2 bus groups (about 18 people) into the small shop and offering us a broken piece of 2 types of cookies. The only explanation from the “guide” was to read out the labels of the various types of bakery items that were for sale. The description in the program made it sound like we would have an opportunity to taste the “3 types of cakes baked there”. Our second stop was a cork museum. We were rushed through for some reason. Not enough time to wander about. Next, we arrived at the cork factory. Our group merged with other groups. This enlarged group was too large to fit into the small viewing room to watch a video. Too crowded. The tour guide seemed quite knowledgeable but she had no sound system so many of us didn’t hear much of what she said. We drove to an area with restaurants for lunch. Our guide was hesitant to recommend a good place to eat and then disappeared...? We then visited a small museum to view an excavated Arab castle. Here, we wandered around with no guidance. Very strange. We looked forward to visiting the large agricultural estate as advertised in the itinerary. We didn't do this at all. Instead we stopped at a closed summer park where we wandered around taking a few photos of a dried up waterway that apparently is a great place for families to come in the summer. Our guide was pleasant - Nelson - but did not provide commentary along the way. There were 2 people in the front of the van with him, 3 others seated behind and 3 more seated at the back. The only people who heard anything that he said were the 2 folks in the front set. It would have helped if there was a microphone. He made absolutely no effort to include the rest of the party in any conversation. He admitted he did not know the area! At each stop all the drivers ( 3 vans grouped together now) gathered for a smoke and unless someone actually approached them to ask a question they tended not to interact with the people. The only real interaction that Nelson had with us was to encourage us “to hurry up and move along “ at the stops along the way. Overall, we were very disappointed in this tour and others were too. Provided feedback to our excursion representative - Claudia. She apologized, forwarded our comments to Portitours, and indicated she would stop selling this tour. We were not offered any compensation.