Shore Tours with Island Marketing Ltd? Page 2 Ask A Question Forum

I'm sorry to hear that your tour did not go as planned.  We however had an entirely different experience with Island Marketing going to Lamanai.  It was one of the highlights of our cruise.

Now we didn't book a private tour, it was four of us.  We had a great guide.  I don't know if he was an LDS guide or not, sorry for my ignorance but I'm really not sure what an LDS guide is.  Can you elaborate?  We had a Belize Tourism Association licenced guide or something like that.  Extremly knowledgable and we found him really interesting, even the kids enjoyed him.

The river part of the tour was longer then yours and we did see one crocodile which was a site and a bird that walked on the water.  The Howler monkeys were at the ruins site but looked like they were sleeping high above us and didn't make a sound unfortunately.  The ruins were magnificent, awe inspiring.  Going back in the boat was much quicker as they wanted to be sure to have us in the port with time to space, and they did.

Our van, though not new, seemed to be in good working order and looked much better then most we saw parked by the the boat dock at the river.  I guess in a poorer country, you work with what you have.  BTW, our friends did cave tubing through the cruise line, and they were in a beat up school bus without air conditioning..so I guess its just the state of the country. Its central america after all.

Our experience was a very good one and I would suggest this tour to people that want to experience the natural beauty and culture of belize.  If you are expecting posh facilities or transport, I don't think you can find it in Belize anywhere so your best bed would be to stay onboard.  It is a long tour and you won't end up with a lot of time at the port before you have to tender back to the boat but our guide made sure we were back ontime.