Portugal Spain Tours and Trips

A very well-organised tour from beginning to end. Breakfast at most places had plenty of choice, and having some lunches and dinners included was excellent and made everything so convenient. We really appreciated the little extras along the way — things like the horse ride around the city, free time to explore, and stops at local shops known for their regional produce all added something special to the experience. The guides were incredibly informative and took great care of us, and by the end felt more like friends than guides. We made wonderful memories and would happily recommend this tour. A bit more information about the optional additional tours would have been helpful, as some were different than expected, and it would have been nice if tickets to certain sites, like the palaces in Sintra, were included.

An absolutely fantastic tour! Everything was so well organised, with great breakfast options at most places and some delicious lunches and dinners included — which made everything easy and stress-free. The guides were amazing: super knowledgeable, genuinely caring, and by the end felt like close friends. We had the best time, made unforgettable memories, and couldn’t recommend this tour more! Oumaima, our guide was wonderful — so knowledgeable, spoke English really well and always happy to answer our many questions. Most importantly, they truly cared about our safety and wellbeing, which made us feel relaxed and confident the whole time.

Kathryn and Augusto were fabulous! Took care of all our questions, needs, etc. Kathryn helped me find restaurants to celebrate a birthday! We had great local guides. Meals were a wide variety of tasting menus. The luncheon with a local family was the best! The hotels were excellent and I was raised in the hotel business.

Having really enjoyed the Explore hiking trip on La Gomera in January 2025, we came back for more on Gran Canaria in January 2026. The hotel in the casco historico of sleepy Aguimes was charming, albeit the breakfasts were rather basic and the double beds only 1.40m wide (we are used to 2m at home!). In contrast, the hotel in Altea lacked a certain charm, but had a super bed and a terrific breakfast. Our very affable and multi-lingual Explore leader, Brian, ensured some good extra activities (eg making goat’s cheese) and gave the group plenty of options for the free day. We rested our knees on this free day and went to the excellent Bodega Los Berrazales, a wine and coffee finca, in the Agaete valley as well as visiting, briefly before it had really woken up, Puerto de las Nieves; Brian’s information on the punctual but not very frequent public buses was spot on for this non hiking jaunt). The astronomy talk over one of the dinners at a farm outside Aguimes was a bit comical with half the slides in Spanish and an astronomer with shaky English. Dinners were not included in the tour but Brian always arranged dinners at interesting restaurants. He was at pains to describe aspects of Canarian history, culture and geology throughout the tour. The Museo Guayadque in the Guayadque Ravine (Gorge?) was fascinating. For me, also as a keen student of the Spanish language and all things Hispanic, these were just as important as purely the hiking. The hiking, and the views the hikes offered, were indeed pretty spectacular. We may have been lucky with the weather with a lot of sun at a very pleasant temperature. Apparently it had rained quite a bit the week before, so a number of areas were quite verdant. Described as moderate, the terrain, both in terms of sharp volcanic rockiness as well as steepness, both up and down, was quite tough for non-regular hikers, such as me, a 64 year old (albeit twice a week gym goer).

Joao was an excellent; he was great with answering all questions. Armindo, our bus driver, was great, also; he was always very courteous. Please tell them both thank you for an outstanding travel experience.

I especially enjoyed the local tours that included family wineries, distilleries, tile- making artists and the cork farm. Souvenirs, gifts and magnets I purchased are significant reminders of parts of the trip that I will never forget. Our tour guide, Joao, took good care of us, in sooo many ways that were above and beyond what a tour guide would ordinarily do; I appreciate his bringing my "left-in-the-hotel" cell phone to the airport and getting it to me before my flight departed Lisbon!