Alan's Water Taxi & Kachemak Bay Adventures — Local services in Homer

We had such experience with Alan’s tour. We are family of 4 rented RV in anchorage on early June 2025 and came to Homer after 3 days stay in Seward. It was raining and cold for the first 2 days and last day seems sunny, my husband and my son went fishing so I was looking at AlaskaApp and booked our kayak trip at 11pm you know is just sunset at that time.

It indeed was a beautiful day, Alan provide everything to make this experience comfortable, he has boots, even kayak glove if cold (luckily we do not need this), the Texan boy Quinton walked to ramp 2 and captain Madison is so cool. It is a 20 minutes water taxi to bay and she stopped by a bird island and we spotted 2 puffins , seals and so many birds. She is so cool and fun, we love her beautiful smile.

Since we booked last minutes so there are only me and my daughter . Our guide Asta is waiting is in the bay she fitted us the kayak and here we go. On our 3 hours kayak, she give us the whole educational and entertainment guide, we now know the starfish is keystone species and they just came back after an extinct due to unknown disease. The kechmach bay is in the divide between pacific plates and North America plates that why part of mountain is covered with glacier Icefield and part of mountain is green forest. Also we know Asta is a collegial swimmer and just graduated from college last May and experience her freedom and adventures before she decided what she is going to do, she has been so many wonderful places and she gave lots of good advice to my daughter she is 16 also a varsity swimmer, I really hope my daughter can be like her, strong fit health love life and so fun to be with.

Asta gave us options, what we need to do, we just want to paddle around, so she timed exactly so we cross the low point and did not need to work too hard to against the wind. we kayak the halibut bay see oyster farm, see the houses dotted around the shore, and then we paddled back with Alaska burn and sweat and our beautiful captain already waiting there.

I know they also have other tours combine hike and glacier lake kayak so if I ever get back I would love...

I’ve never felt so ill-informed, ill-prepared, or ill-at ease. We arrived at 9:30 as instructed only to find out that our guide was not there yet. We were left sitting on the pier without any further instruction. Our guide finally arrived and barely introduced themselves. We were given ZERO introduction to our day’s adventure and then handed a pair of high rubber boots (with no explanation for their necessity). When we finally got underway we were given ZERO safety instructions as the small vessel crammed with eight people and a dog headed out across a zero visibility bay. Once we were delivered to the shore we were once again given very little information about what was happening or what to expect next. PFD’s were distributed but not with any safety in mind — simply “put it on and let’s go”. At one point our guide admitted “I’m really glad the fog lifted. I was rather nervous about us crossing the bay in our kayaks with the fog”. What!?! What if the fog hadn’t lifted? When were they going to let us know of the danger or their unease?!? When we reached the self-guided portion of our adventure they really took “self-guided” literally. We were given vague directions about where to go. Why provide an extremely detailed map for parking and then NOTHING for the 6 mile wilderness hike? We were told about a water source and “I assure you it’s safe. I drink it all the time. It looks dirty at the source, but it’s clean”. Great. Thanks. We were told to head back by 4:20 and the boat would pick us up at 5:30. It was all so hap-hazard. The old adage of you get what you pay for certainly applies here. If you don’t mind a bit of careless abandon and want a cheap day of kayaking, this is the tour...

My sister and I signed up for the Ocean & Ice tour and loved it! Our guides Asta and Jessi were awesome and totally made the trip a fun, easy-going experience. I especially loved getting to hike with both of them for a bit and learn more about the local history, flora and fauna. They also made a little fire for us at our lunch break so we could have hot coffee and hot chocolate! We rate this very high on our list of adventures we've done here in Alaska and would highly recommend this trip to anyone who likes a little adventure and wants to get a really unique experience with the glacier ice.

We don't normally do guided tours and hikes, so as experienced hikers and kayakers, we were a bit bummed to have to wait around at times for the slower members of the group, but that's just the risk of signing up for a group adventure with people you don't know. My only feedback might be related to that, of potentially trying to group the members together that might have more experience but I am assuming logistically that might not be possible. We didn't get to go quite as far up to the glacier as I was hoping because we were shorter on time due to members of our group, but that was no fault of our guides. More so just luck of who you end up doing...