Tawantinsuyo Tour: calamity tours on double decker buses

Tawantinsuyo Tour Not a good option in Arequipa

By Shawn Matson

The fever of the double deckers has arrived to Arequipa few years ago. Now we have several companies that offer the same service which I am going to speak about. Let´s speak about Tawantinsuyo Tour.

Tawantinsuyo is one of the travel agencies that offers this kind of service. The only difference with other companies is just the color of the buses: there are yellow,orange,green and the blue ones of Tawantinsuyo Tour.

Tawantinsuyo is the cheapest and its publicity can be found in all the travel agencies of Arequipa.When you ask for a city or countryside tour the one in charge of the travel agency will show you one of the pamphlets of the different companies available and there you will find the pamphlet of Tawantinsuyo Tour. (See picture above).

Why the travel agencies sell its product? Because it is very cheap and it offers good commissions to the street vendors and travel agents.

The quality of the service is terrible! The tours offered are more shopping oriented and the information provided during the tour is very poor compared with a guidebook! Lots of stops in very touristic places and no good information about Arequipa. I took other tour with another company and it is the same so I don´t reccomend you my friends to take these kind of tours done with double decker buses.

When we departed from Arequipa I was eager to see the countryside of Arequipa and we were taken to a place called “Carmen Alto” a place where you can see Arequipa´s valley. The info provided as I told you before was very basic and when we descended from the bus we were just invited to get inside the place to take pictures and they showed us the store in case we wanted to buy something. That was all. There was no interest of the guide in providing information.Not at all.

I thought I was the only one upset about the disasterous tour I took but not. There were other people who agreed with me that we were guilty of having bought the same tour. There was a family who bought it in Colonial Tours other people bought the tour in other places but we ended traveling together with the same company.

The city tour can be donde by ourselves with a very guidebook and in case you want to visit the countryside of Arequipa I recommend you to go to Sogay (this place is called Little Colca) or to Yarabamba or Chiguata where you are going to see the real countryside of Arequipa and not a touristic shopping center. Don´t forget that your holidays are important and don´t be fooled like us with these poor quality tours of TAWANTINSUYO TOUR.