Full Day Small Group Tour of Caral Temple from Lima

The tour company that Viator worked with on this tour was Cusco Unique Experience. I was interested in a Caral Tour and booked this for New Years Day, as I expected most things in Lima to be closed on the holiday. I call the tour company to confirm that they in fact had us down for the tour on New Years and that the site was open. They confirmed both. I booked the tour for 3 adults. On New Years day, they arrived approx. 40 minute late though they called at the 20 minute mark, to inform of this in a Mitsubishi Mirage G4, which falls into the sub-compact category of cars. This would have been fine, but the tour company sent both a driver and a tour guide, yielding 5 adults in a car that could only comfortably hold 4. If this were a short drive, this would have been uncomfortable, but feasible, but this was a drive that was 3.5 hours each way, so it was pretty miserable. Additionally, I never fully understood the point of the tour guide, as she wasn't a guide for the site of Caral which I assume that the site required the use of their guides and she didn't know much about either the site or the surrounding area. Rather, she seemed to be more of an interpreter for the driver though she called herself the tour guide. Again, this would have been fine, but her English was only okay, often times leaving me wondering if she understood my question. I found it easier to converse with her in a combination of broken Spanish I do not claim to speak Spanish, so this tells you how bad my Spanish is and broken English to get an idea of a point or question across. Given this level of communication, I would have rather just had the driver who only spoke Spanish, but would have taken up one less space in the small car. About 2-2.5 hours into our drive, the road turned into all dirt roads. This wouldnt have cause me not to book the tour, but a warning would be helpful. I get car sick, so in the small car, which isnt really built for this terrain, this was excruciating. The driver, Pedro, was awesome, and did slow down for me and on the return trip found a smoother alternate route. We arrived at Caral site and the tour guide went to buy tickets and get us a Caral certified guide. Because it was New Years, there were no English guides, which I would have assumed that the company would have pre-arranged. There was a bit of waiting around while they tried to find us a guide, but there was no luck. Finally, our guide decided that we would get a Spanish guide and she would interpret. She tried hard, but I already spoke of her English skills, so this did not go well. Additionally, the Caral guide was also guiding a handful of other Spanish speaking people visiting the site, making this not quite the small group tour English speaking tour I had originally signed up for. This made for a less than exciting tour of a site that we were very excited to see. The site was awesome, but we didnt really know what we were looking at. Id listen to the Spanish explanation and then our guides English one and then ask, Didnt the Caral guide say something about to be greeted by an answer that often didnt make sense. My husband and father, just quit trying to listen to either. With the tour over, we were supposed to have time for lunch. She explained that the cost was not included, which I knew, but the time was allotted for it and told us to go to the restaurant on site, which we had trouble finding. My father finally got her to walk us to it, to determine that it was closed which is why we couldnt find it. It had been open earlier, but was closed now. If they had arrived on time or they had tickets / guide prepared, we would have made it in before closing. They attempted to find lunch on the way home, but it was just googling for random places on the way. With it being New Years, and most places closed, we opted to just go home instead of being crammed in the small car any extra time as we went from place to place trying to find something open. Finally, on the ride back to the hotel, we learned that the AC did not work in the car. This wasnt a problem on the way up, as it was morning and chilly, but it was incredibly hot on the way home, leading to a miserable cramped, hot, 3.5 hour drive to Lima.