Authentic Chiapas: Chamula & Zinacatan Indigenous Culture Tour

Excellent value. As a couple, we could t even get a taxi there and back for the cost of the tour ($300mxn or £11.30gbp). Rodrigo provided a lot of information and was very knowledgeable. San Juan Bautista is an incredible place and the background information provided made it come alive. The trip to the cloth-making/embroidery collective was too lengthy, but the tortilla tastings and the sampling of the 5 types of local spirit added to the experience. You can pay anything up to $70USD for this trip so, at 15% of that cost, it is well worth it. We booked at 08:10 for a departure at 09:15 the same day. The only real disadvantage was that, in their shop, they didn’t take credit cards. However, the trip was so cheap we didn’t need it.

It’s nice to visit the local communities. The guide also gives some information and he can answer all the questions. But everything takes a lot of time. The first stop is about how they make clothes but the time they give to shop is a lot. So if you like quick and practical tours, this isn’t the one. Otherwise, good to go.

Alonso, our guide, made the trip fascinating. He was a font of knowledge and information. Both towns were interesting. Seeing the merging of Christian and pagan beliefs practiced in the churches was amazing, especially in Zinacatan. I never saw a church like that - no pews, thousands of candles on tables and the floor with a carpet of pine needles, families drinking a lot of pox (basically moonshine), praying, chanting and performing rituals with animals was otherwordly. Then there was the workshop where many women produced clothing and other articles that sometimes took a year to create. This tour far exceeded expectations.

It has been extremely fascinating and interesting visiting San Lorenzo Zinacatan and San Juan Chamula. The tour was very well organized and the tour guide the best ever, very knowledgeable about history and legends of these populations. Amazing experience!

The guide and tour were great and exceeded our expectations. The church at San Juan de Chamula was amazing, like nothing I've ever experienced before. If I come back to San Cristobal, I would do this tour again!

We were really satisfied with the service, everything was on time and very professional. Alonso our guide did an excellent job explaining everything with many details, he is a great guy with tons of information and really interesting points of views about environment and politics. We recommend this service and congratulate Alonso for his effort and patience.

I really enjoyed this tour. Alonso was an informative and gracious tour guide who is clearly a dedicated steward of Mexican and indigenous cultures. It was an honor to see the church in Chamula, and to interact with some of the women in Zinacatan who make the textiles that you see in the markets of San Cristobal. I recommend this tour!

I liked this tour very much. I used a different tour group for a similar tour last year, but this company had more interesting stops and a bi-lingual guide, who painstakingly gave us his talk in English and Spanish while clearly not feeling well. (Thank you Alfonso.) I especially enjoyed the two churches in Zinacantán and again, the interesting sights in the San Juan Chamula church. We took a different routes to and from San Cristóbal and I would have loved to see the scenery both coming and going, but the tour van windows were so darkly tinted, that nothing but shadows could be seen through to the outside. It was quite unfortunate, as I look forward to the scenery to and from a destination as much as the destination itself. But the only view to the outside that could be seen was through the front windshield, past the heads and seats of people in front of us. Had the scenery been viewable, I would have rated this tour a “5”.

Congratulations on your selection of the tour guide. Unfortunately I don’t recall his name (even more worrying as he learned the name of each one of the 20 of us I the tour). We took the tour today April 15th. He was extremely knowledgeable, patient, well versed in Spanish and French and a great guide. It never felt like a shopping spree, yes we went to the textile workshops in Zinacantán but it was perhaps a highlight in our trip. He was well known by the locals and had great information and understanding about the complexities of the local culture. We learned so much and were happy to have selected this tour company. Will definitely be back to try additional tours with them. The lady at the ticket office was also extremely friendly, personal and informative. Highly recommended!

This can be an interesting tour of two indigenous communities, Zinacatan and San Juan Chamula, however my personal experience was not positive. The Zinacatan part of the tour is a standard "shopping tour" in which you get to see the way the local people work the textiles, and you have the chance to buy their products. I don't mind this, as that's the standard way of operation in Mexico, China, Morocco and everywhere else. At this point, I had my first negative impression of the tour, and in particular, the tour guide: Alex/Alejandro. After the explanation and shopping time was over he said "wait here for a few minutes". I guess this is the time he settles his commissions from the shop owner, and, again, I don't have issues with that: that's the way the guides make a living. But this time he took a long time, while the tour group just waited there. In the next stop, the exotic town of San Juan Chamula, you get to visit the main church in town. That was the high point for me as it is a truly out-of-ordinary place. After the visit, and before returning to San Cristobal, I had a personal issue with the guide: I was asking questions regarding daily life of these towns, and I guess he took offense in what I was asking (or he was just fed-up with tourists), and his response was something like: "People from Northern Mexico are just a bad copy of people from the US". He knew fully well I am from Northern Mexico so there is no place for confusion here. So, I guess, the tour is ok if you have an interest in these towns, and you don't ask the wrong questions, like I, apparently, did.