Private Tours of Old San Juan — Local services in San Juan

My family and I went on this private tour with Javier recently. I myself had been to Old San Juan as a child. However, this was my husband and sons first visit. Javier personally reached out to us prior to the tour, and when he did, I made sure to let him know my son was a young child (age 6), and my husband, who is a natural redhead with very fair skin, was extra heat sensitive since it was during the month of July. Javier replied back that he was happy to accommodate and adjust to our specific needs.

During the tour, which lasted 4 hours total, he took us to walk around and personally guided us through the San Cristobal Fort, and the Old San Juan Catedral Basilica Menor de San Juan Bautista.

While driving throughout Old San Juan, he made sure to highlight the most important areas, and also made a personalized stop due to our interest in trying piraguas (local Puerto Rican snow cones/shaved ice). When we drove by the cat sanctuary, because we expressed an interest in taking time to pet all of the Puerto Rican cats that gathered there, he said it was no problem to take the time to do so and waited patiently.

In all honesty, I have been on many different private tours in my years of travel, and none of them even compare/stand out, or come close to the level of professionalism we experienced with Javier on the Old San Juan tour.

In general, my husband is an extremely hard sell on things, and even he left with rave reviews, which blew my mind.

I honestly expected my son, who is 6 years old, to tire halfway through the tour, but Javier found ways to keep him engaged throughout the whole 5 hour tour.

He beautifully accommodated the need for us to balance walking with driving due to my husband's extra heat sensitivity, making sure to ask along the way if we would like to get out at certain stops, or would rather stay in his very well air conditioned van, driving by important highlights instead.

In the end, we all left with a sense of fulfillment, catering to our own needs and interests. I even reached out to my families travel agent of many years to make sure she put Javier and his tour on the top of her list to recommend to anyone and everyone of her clients that were traveling to Puerto Rico in the future as a must do excursion and tour. Well done and...

Loved our tour with Javier, highly recommend it.

Great conversation throughout the day. I loved talking about history, politics, nature, and spirituality (he's studied both healing and civil engineering).

He has a calming, meditative presence. He's very knowledgeable about the island, having lived here for nearly all of his life.

My husband and I toured with Javier in early November. Javier picked us up from our hotel around 10am. We briefly discussed what we wanted to do, talked about COVID-19 precautions, then set off. The tour lasted until around 5pm.

We went to the South of the island to a sanctuary where a Christian teacher came a few hundreds of years ago to teach. There's still a church. The descendants of her original followers make pilgrimages to this place. We the went to a natural, green spring -- a beautiful place with a short hike where we listened to a bubbling creek, saw a small waterfall, and took a refreshing swim.

After that we had lunch (rice, beans, salad, plantains -- were vegetarian, but no worries, there are lots of meat options, as well as a heavy emphasis on pork). My husband asked for a quick stop for some coffee, then we went to hot springs to bathe in two pools (Banos de Coamo). It was an active, but deeply relaxing day.

We loved this day in Puerto Rico where we learned a lot, swam, and savored excellent conversation throughout the day. We parted after taking a photo together and exchanging social media contacts to...

Javier was great and the tour was perfect for us. We were 14 people with a wide range of ages - 4 kids (age 3,6,7,9), 6 college kids, and 4 adults (30s/40s) - so it was hard to come up with the exact itinerary for the day. Javier picked us up and dropped us off at the cruise port (which was hard to find someone to do) and took us first to the river with the rope swing. The older kids LOVED it and some adults and kids tried it too. It was too hard for the 3 and 6 year old but Javier provided life jackets, so they enjoyed just swimming in the river and watching. Next, we went to Yokahu tower and the La Coca Falls viewpoint. If we had more time, we definitely would’ve enjoyed climbing the rocks beside the waterfall. For the last stop, we debated back and forth between a hike to a view at the top of he mountain or a shorter hike to a river we could swim in. We chose the latter and did the Angelito trail - this was my personal favorite part but I’m not sure Javier would go back because he does not have cell service there in case of emergency. (Note that we did though)

His prices were also super fair when I compared to other guides and when we emailed him the day before that we were coming to the port 2 hours earlier with 4 more people, he was more than happy to accommodate.

Thank you Javier! We hope to meet you...