I will start with the positives. The tour guide was knowledgeable and the quality of the food locations was good.
The negatives, the quantity of the food could have been better. The amount of food relative to the number of people it was being shared by varied greatly between food locations.
The very negative, I understand that the participants in a tour can have a positive or negative impact on the dynamics. That can only be controlled so much. However, your guide should not be the one initiating conversations not appropriate for the tour and should at least try to redirect these conversations when initiated by the tour participants.
It started when the tour guide complained to us about a decision that the mayor had made that she was not pleased with. She also initiated a conversation about a local former NBA player having his child baptized in the local church even though the couple was not married. She explicitly asked me about the gun control laws in Texas.
There were many more inappropriate topics that she either brought up or actively participated in without redirecting and/or diffusing. The last straw for me was when one of the participants started complaining about a law that was changed where he lived in the US. He explicitly blamed it on people being “to woke".
To the credit of the rest of the group you could hear a pin drop for a few minutes after he made this comment.
I did not bother to comment because it may have escalated the situation, it definitely would have continued the conversation, and it would not have made a difference.
Although the tour guide should have intervened earlier, she definitely should have at this point and reminded everyone that were there to enjoy ourselves on vacation, not to discuss politics.
She did not and the in fact she initiated and/or participated in all of these conversations.
In summary, I did not travel thousands of miles and spend thousands of dollars to discuss politics or the criminal justice system, and I definitely did not sign up for a food tour to hear the tour guides complaints about the mayor of her city or the current political climate in her country.
As the tour guide, she definitely should not have initiated or actively participated in any of these conversations, and should have done something to redirect the conversations when these topics came up.
To the credit of the tour company, I requested and received a full refund.
I would have given the tour a 3, but given my personal experience, I must give it a 2.
