West Coast Discovery - Piha Beach o Muriwai Beach desde Auckland

I tried many times to get ahold of your operator the day prior. Usually, you'll hear from a tour company a week; two days, and the day prior as a reminder to the tour. I did not realize at the time when I booked it was non-cancelable. I actually reached out to Viator. I said I hadn't heard and they said you'll have to wait until tomorrow morning the day of the tour until the office open to find out what was happening. I was actually on the phone up to 10:00 at night trying to find out what the story was. The day of the tour I found out the operator had COVID. Very unprofessional. I could have made other plans. If I was able to cancel and get my money back I could have booked a different tour. By the time I found out the only person obviously the operator was unavailable to do the tour it was too late to book anything. I would have been sympathetic to them being ill if I had gotten some advance notice. Unprofessional. I was able to get my money back. Also disappointed by Viator representing this organization.

A fun and informative tour, our tour guide was very knowledgeable, friendly, and informative, honestly one of the highlights for us in new Zealand.

Great tour! Our guide was very flexible as to how long we stayed at each stop and gave us great recommendations for other things to do while in Auckland.

You see the word “or” in the description? The driver did not show up to work so the owner had to do the driving. We had booked 3 hour tour to Gannett colony in Muriwai Bay, but he took us to Piha Beach, so then he had to “fulfill” our booking and our tour ended up being 5 hours! Book at your own risk as it is non-refundable.

Tour not experienced as advertised! 1. Was under the impression that this was a private tour but another unknown couple was added to our tour. The vehicle used did not comfortably fit three adults in the back seat!!! Vehicle appeared to be driver’s personal vehicle. 2. Tour guide did not provide any dialogue on the surrounding areas, flora, fauna, or the Māori history. While a nice guy, he said almost nothing. NOT a tour guide but merely a driver. 3. First stop was some random trail entrance where the driver thought he may have been given the wrong address. 4. After stopping at Piha beach the driver but our hotel address in the gps as if the tour was over and then asked if we wanted to go anywhere else. The other couple was really confused at that since they had specifically requested, when booking, to go to Muriwai Beach (in the description of the tour) to see the Gannet Colony. The guide driver didn’t seem to have ever heard of the Gannet Colony and a member from the other couple had to help him find it on the gps. When we finally got to the other beach area we could just make out the colony high up on the opposite climb. From the tour pic I assumed we would get closer. There was another road to a nature refuge near by but the driver didn’t take us there or suggest going there. 5. Never went to the Auckland Visit Arataki Center (listed in the tour description). Never mentioned by the driver either. Later I looked up the location and the website listed it has been closed since January due to a weather event. Tour description was very misleading and this part should be removed if the location isn’t even open. At a minimum we should have been notified before or at least upon pick up that we couldn’t do this part. 5. I doubt random location mention in #3 was the “Explore the Waitakere Ranges rainforest” part of the tour. Very first sentence of the tour description. If it was, the destination is very misleading. 6. We heard from the other couple that our driver wasn’t the real tour guide and was just filling in. If that’s the case then the lack of tour makes sense but it should have been cancelled and our money refunded or at least we should have been notified of the change and given an option to cancel. We had a rental car and could have driven ourselves since we weren’t getting the “tour guide knowledge” we thought we were paying for. 7. We spent more time in the car then actually onsite at any of the stops. Granted we expected driving a certain amount but the proportion was way off.

Tour guide was extremely friendly and flexible, and navigated us around a maze of closed roads and trails to get where we wanted. At the time of writing, other larger tours were not able to take us to Piha, and doing this tour saved hours over trying to drive ourselves.