“This is a fantastic tour travelling from Ayers Rock to Alice Spring and stopping in the most popular points: Uluru, Katja Tjuta and Kings Canyon, with a very professional Guide (Connor)
Improvement points: the meals and during the sunrise in Uluru, it would be better to have the sun in the back of Uluru”
“Please find below the email I sent to Rock Tour about the tour reserved with Backpacker Deals. It speaks for Itelf:
Hello,
Thank you for your email, but as said on Sunday night, I expected a call from the people responsible on Monday.
As a matter fact, I am not only unhappy, but clearly shocked by the appalling conditions of the tour and the way I was treated during the three days with The Rock tour. The list of my disappointment is very long. I will give you most of them.
First, the camping conditions. We were given filthy swags (if that is what you call swags, because to me it is just a bag, full of dirt and dust, whereas you talk of individual tents on your website). In addition to that, the sleeping bags which I rent for an additional fee were old, dirty and very smelly, which made them horrible to sleep in. Not to mention the tents we were proposed on the second night, full of holes and filled with dirt. And finally the biggest thing was to find out that our guide Patrick had a mattress to sleep on we did not even have one : it tells a lot about how you consider your clients. This reason itself would have been enough to be shocked, but the bad experience kept going the whole way.
After that, we were proposed indecent meals, burritos with no sauce, and there was not enough food for the meals and breakfasts (no more burritos, butter, jam, cheese, tuna, tomatoes…). But the worse was to come when we were served the remains of the second night’s dinner as lunch for the next day in burritos ! Not only the food was disgusting, but we had to eat it twice after 20 hours of unhealthy storage ! How do you treat your customers !!
After that, we were constantly oppressed by Patrick, the guide, all day long, to speed up because of the schedule, ordering us to cook the food, to wash the dishes, to hurry up while walking, in a really unpleasant manner. In addition the conditions in which the food was prepared and the dishes were washed were completely unhealthy (no soap to wash the hands, no clear water to rinse…).
For all of those reasons I refused to eat the food served on the last meal and bought my own.
Also, as for the program of the tour, we basically did around 6 hours of driving per day, all day long, in an uncomfortable unheated bus (which by the way you say is on your website), with Patrick sending texts messages while driving. We did not do the aboriginal cultural center as announced, and spent 1.30 hours on the second day to go fetch some wood on the side of the road. I also have to say something about it because, to make the best out of the money we pay for the tour, instead of bringing wood, your have us go and fetch numerous and large timbers we have to put down (extremely big otherwise Patrick would send us back and again rushing us). This is not only an annoying activity, since we have to carry maybe 5 or 6 timbers each, but also very unsafe, because you have us do it with no gloves and no tools. I have during that shameful activity made a hole in my shoes kicking down on trees and three other tourists were injured, to which Patrick says : « no worries, it is just a scratch ! ». How do you dare treating your clients like that!!
Finally, when I had a word with Patrick on the second night about the way we were treated by the rock tour and the way he treated us, i only got the following answer « It’s a dirty tour ». The fact that you pretend to convey a human experience along with your tour does not allow you to treat people, let alone clients, in this shameful way, to make the best money out of us.
Saying that, I am not only standing for myself and my partner Sophie, but for many people of the group who felt the same way.
As a result, as my three days holiday was completely ruined by The Rock tour, I demand:
- to be fully reimbursed of of the tour
- to be reimbursed of my shoes I damaged because of the unsafe conditions of the wood fetching activity (invoice attached)
- to be reimbursed of the meal I had to buy on the last day because I refused to eat the unhealthily stored remains from the night before (receipt attached).
Regards,
Keyne”
“The rock tour is really special for me. The untouched nature is fantastic. And the tour guide is so nice, friendly and helpful. The people in the tour are funny as well. I really enjoy my time during the tour. Highly recommend.”
