Beautiful ruins and cenote - Our guide (I think Ekh) was informative and amazing! Be prepared to climb the stairs of the ruins. The cenote was very cool, and they had good professional photographers (at a charge).

A Must See - This tour is a must. There were a few hiccups that were completely out of the operators control but they handled it well and kept us on track. Our guide was very helpful and informative. This is a very long day so come prepared.

A great tour - We had a wonderful time on this tour!! Francesco our guide grew up here is of mayan decent and gave great explanation of everything!! The walking thru ruins was a wonderful experience with reaching the acropolis as the grand finale!! Ek Balam is not crowded and so interesting!!! The centote was beautiful and fun so refreshing on a hot day too!! Lunch was served as a buffet and was very good. There are crafter that toy can buy from there too Diego was our driver her got us there safely and stayed with the van and our things

Ek Balam ruins and cenote- a must see! - Ek Balam and the cenote! Unforgettable experience! Highly recommend this tour from Cancun Adventures. Thank you guide, Nestor and driver Javi.

The ruins were great but... - The ruins were great but the time at the shopping outlet was a bore. I do understand that the local people need the money but I would not ever choose to go to such a place.

Amazing Ek Balam and Cenote Secreto Maya! - Ek Balam is far less crowded than other sites. Our guides were courteous and knowledgeable. The cenote offered rappelling and zip lining which were both really fun. I enjoyed not having to wear a mandatory life jacket like we've had to at other cenotes.

Great way to spend the day! - Don't miss out on climbing up the Ek Balam pyramid before it's not allowed anymore! A hidden gem among the many tours offered in the area. Our guide Alejandro was knowledgeable, nice, attentive and a true gentleman. Note that you should bring comfortable shoes (not flip flops) a towel, snacks for the long car rides (2/3 hours each way coming from Cancun) and all the sun protection.

Two incredible adventures - We loved having a small group, and our tour guide Tonantzin was wonderful. Our family had two incredible adventures: climbing to the top of the Acropolis at Ek Balam, and rappelling into a very large partially closed cenote. Lunch was delicious and we appreciated having a vegan option after asking ahead of time. One thing we were not expecting was to pay $125 USD for the pictures in the cenote and of the Mayan ceremony, which they email to you. That was to buy them all, they did offer to buy one picture for $20. The pictures are taken by students, and it helps to support their education. I’m very happy we decided to buy them and to me it was well worth having the family photos.

Mixed feelings on day trip to Ek Balam - great itinerary, poor execution. - I have mixed feelings regarding this trip to Ek Balam.  If you are deciding to go to Chichen Itza vs Ek Balam, then 100% go to Chichen Itza.  I chose to go to both sites (on separate tours), because from my research Ek Balam is one of the last Mayan ruins in which you are still allowed to climb the pyramid.  Because this tour did allow me to have this experience, I am giving it two stars rather than one. On paper, the itinerary for this day trip is solid.  You visit Ek Balam, then go to a small town to learn more about Mayan culture and have lunch (which is included in the price of the tour, but you have to pay for drinks), and get to go to a cenote.  This was a really nice cenote too.  You choose how you get down to the water - either walking down some wooden stairs or repelling down.  Down in the cenote, there are two zip lines - a lower one and a higher one.  So adventure seekers will enjoy this part. Where this day trip really fell short was in how little this tour company, Wisest Travels, cares about its guests and their time.  This is already a long day trip (planned for 10 hours), but ours took over 13 hours because of the poor decisions and logistics made by Wisest Travels. My girlfriend and I were originally told to meet our bus driver outside of our resort at 7:30am.  Then, the night before, Wisest Travel changed this to 7am.  So we waited and waited.  We texted with Wisest Travel's customer service through WhatsApp, but they were useless.  They just kept on saying, "the bus driver will be there in 10 minutes."  Then 10 minutes more, then 10 minutes more, etc.  We were picked up at 8am. What we did not know is that Wisest Travels decided to combine their Cancun tour with their Playa del Carmen tour.  So while we waited for our bus to pick us up, there were other guests from Playa del Carmen that were waiting for us to arrive to them (which made everyone late). This would have repercussions on the rest of the day trip.  Because we were running late, Wisest Travel decided to cut the amount of time we spent at Ek Balam.  My girlfriend actually decided not to climb the pyramid because of how steep it was and she was worried she would not be able to climb all the way up and back down again in the abbreviated time that we were given.  This upset me greatly. We next went to the small town and had lunch, actually driving past the cenote, to later have to backtrack to get to the cenote.  This only wasted more time.  I think on a normal tour that they would go from Ek Balam to the cenote and end in the small town for lunch, so as not to back track. The biggest disappointment of all was how Wisest Travel decided to drop us back off at our resort.  They decided to drive the bus to Playa del Carmen, then drop every other guest off at their resorts, and have a separate car meet us at the last resort in Playa del Carmen to drive us back to Cancun.  If they were sending a separate car to drive us to Cancun, then why could they have not met us at the cenote or even at the first resort in Playa del Carmen.  This wasted at least a good hour of our time!  We arrived back at our resort around 8pm, meaning we missed having dinner with our friends that night who we had traveled to Cancun with. Then there was our tour guide.  He did the very minimum to fulfill his job.  But he was so uninterested and unengaging.  While he was giving the tour at the Ek Balam site, he actually yelled at guests for walking too slow or lingering too long to take pictures because he was on a tighter schedule he needed to keep us on.  And on the entire tour he was chain smoking. The point I am trying to make is that I was not expecting to pay good money to have my time on vacation wasted riding for hours in a bus or car.  Did I get to visit Ek Balam and climb their Mayan pyramid?  Yes.  Was I safe on the entire day trip?  Yes.  But did I also have my time wasted?  Yes.  And did I feel like a valued guest of Wisest Travels?  Absolutely not! The bottom line is that if you have your heart set on climbing a Mayan pyramid while you are still able, then this is probably the day trip you will have to select since it was one of the few I found on Viator that was reasonably priced.  Will Wisest Travel provide you everything on their itinerary? Yes.  But you should go into it knowing that you might spend more of your valuable time on this day trip than you had planned and it might be led by a tour guide who is only going through the motions rather than caring if you have a good experience.

Cancun via Playa del Carmen to Ek Balam - With the detour via Playa del Carmen, where other tourists got on, the journey from Cancun to Ek Balam is simply too long. This meant that the day trip took almost three hours longer than planned. The archaeological site is definitely worth it. We also found the Mayan cenote very beautiful and had fun. It was positive that our group (10 people) was alone in the pool. It was annoying that we weren't allowed to take photos in the cenote. At the end you could buy pictures, $20 per picture. Despite a very good driver and interesting insights into Mayan culture, we wouldn't book the trip again. Even if you go directly from Cancún to Ek Balam, it's already a full day trip.