AAAAAllAboutService
Aug 2019
The tour was very disorganized from start to finish, the guides spend more time trying to be funny rather than give you accurate tour facts and your schedule is not important to these folks.
It was chaos upon our arrival at the store; several tours were going out at the same time and staff was haphazardly handing out gear in the back of the very crowded store space. We got our gear (which was actually in very nice, new-looking condition) for our kayak and snorkel tour fairly quickly and were told to wait outside; we did as we were told and no one ever came to get us for our tour.
As the tour departure time approached we inquired if our tour was leaving soon and were told that tours never leave on time, so we waited longer. At 10 minutes after our departure time we inquired again and were told just to head down to the beach on our own. We had done a kayak tour with another company in La Jolla before and the group left the storefront all together so this was a surprise to us.
Upon arrival at the beach, instructions were already being given to some of our group so we ended up missing a lot of the information. The guests who arrived after we did, missed all of the instructions. Our tour left the beach about 45 minutes late as there was a lot of waiting around for the staff on the beach to stop socializing and get the kayaks in the water. Once on the water, we had to stop and wait for other members of our tour because their kayaks either capsized or they had trouble steering (probably because they had missed all of the instructions).
While the guides were very nice, they were hard to hear and kept making bad jokes when we could hear them rather than telling us interesting information about the tour content. We get it that a few jokes add to the experience and make it fun but there's got to be a balance with accurate information. Upon arriving at the snorkel site we were given about 20 minutes to snorkel near the caves but were not allowed to go into them (note: our snorkel time was cut short because our tour was running so behind). The snorkeling was super average with only a few fish, one lobster and a sand dollar or two in sight but this could've been because it was mid-day.
The tour did not include kayaking into the caves as we had done before with another company (HBK Tours) so that was a disappointment. Upon departing to return to shore, one of our guides went MIA (we never did find out what happened to her) so our other guide had to get us launched into the surf by herself. Our tour ended a whole hour later than it was supposed to, causing us to have to cancel our other activities for the afternoon. The end.
While the Bike and Kayak Tour Company had the nicest looking gear on the beach and friendly (yet not very helpful) staff, their end product definitely fell short and we won't be recommending them to everybody we talk to. We might try the HBK Tour Company again instead or try another La Jolla excursion all together.