Cave Tubing / Altun Ha Combo tour.... has anyone done this?

[nickb]

I am looking at booking cave tubing / altun ha combo tour. Has anyone done this and was it enough time? Where should I book from? So far I'm leaning to book from "cave - tubing dot net". Has anyone done the combo tour from them? Any and all info is greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

~Nick

[EastCarolina]

I dont know if there is a combo. It would be near impossible to do both in the same day. We just did the cave tubing and only had 2 hours left in port before the last tender.

 

We went with cave tubing dot com (on the 3rd of March) and had a great time. We had a very small group and a funny and friendly guide (keith AKA SpeedO) We did two caves versus one (The other operators only did one) so I would deffinately reccomend dot com. They also fed us a nice lunch of stewed chicken for free. They were great tour guides and took very good care of us.

[CMM]

I might be incorrect, but I don't think these two could be done in a combo. They are both very long excursions, not close to the pier.

 

Major Tom offers zip linning as a combo with cave tubing and .com offers ATV combo, maybe that is what you were thinking?

 

we went with .com and just did the tubing and we were back at the pier with 10 minutes to spare before the last tender.

[JeremyK]

This would be the perfect combo, so there definitely isn't one?

[chrisuletz]

I got quotes for this combo from Major Tom and NCQ. NCQ had better recent reviews so I'm going with them. Nacho of NCQ actually called me and explained that we do the cave tubing first, go to Altun Ha, and spend there as much time as we have left, but he said there should be enough time, as our ship is supposed to be in port for 9 hours.

[dra3]

I was looking into doing this as well, so I'd be curious to know how it worked out for you. When are you doing this?

[nickb]

I did the major tom 'combo tour' I would NOT recommend doing this! First off he had us in the streets while he tried to hail a cab / tour to take us on the tour (not even his tour and it felt very very shady and unsafe). When he was unable to find anyone to take us to do both he said stay where we were and he would be right back.... Fifteen minutes later he was no where to be found. Luckily we went and found him just as he was loading up his last cave tubing tour. He told us to get in the bus and he would meet us at the end of the tubing to take us to the ruins. After the cave tubing Major Tom was no where to be found and the bus took us back to the port....

 

Other points of interest... No one in our group was given head lamps (all the other tour groups had head lamps). Our tour guide had a flashlight but it did not work. Also he did not point out anything (luckily we passed some other groups and could every once in a while hear what their tour guides were pointing out). I was very dissatisfied with the way we were treated. One positive thing was that our bus had another tour guide (not ours) who made the bus stop every couple minutes to pick up rum / wine etc... by the time we got back to the port (about a 40 minute drive) everyone was feeling pretty good and happy...

 

Also there was a group of college girls with us that were supposed to do a zipline / cavetubing combo tour. They also only did the cave tubing (and were told they didn't have enough time to do the ziplining).

[chrisuletz]

We just did this, cave tubing at Jaguar Paw and the ruins at Altun Ha. We even had lunch in between, and we made it back to the ship with enough time to spare.

 

Sorry to hear about the experience with Major Tom. We went with NCQ (Nacho&Cynthia) and they were great. They're a small family operation, they don't use other drivers or guides. Cynthia drove while Nacho did the guide stuff. Cave tubing was a bit short, did just one cave instead of the regular two, but it was just 3 of us in the group. Be prepared for some very bad roads, probably the worst I've ever seen, so everything is very bumpy.

 

So go with NCQ and you can do both. Since it's just themselves doing the tours, I guess you should book in advance, we did it about 3 weeks early.

[drivingmsginger]

Warning: Do not use Major Tom in Belize. We just got back on the Legend on 5/30. We booked with him for zip line & cave tubing. The cave tubing was cancelled. This is where we should have walked away. Instead they told us we had time to do the Altun Ha excursion and the zip line. What they don't tell you is that they are on opposite sides of the country. Some of our group was only going to Altun Ha. Because of Major Tom's greed, he took us to both sites. We were on the bus for approximately 1 1/2 hours each way to the mayan site and then 1 hour each way to the zip line. Long story short....we made it back to the last tender at 4:02. It was supposed to leave at 4:00. They even stopped roadside for lunches, because they didn't want to refund any money at 2:45 PM. No one ate the lunch, because we were all scared about missing the boat. We told them to go on, but Major Tom had insisted they get our lunch, so he wouldn't have to refund any money. Please do not take the chance of using this company. The zip line portion at Jaguar Paw was wonderful. Our guides of Ronnie & Israel were great.