I have had family visiting recently, first my dad, then my mom, and wanted to do something special for them. I love personalized tours and figured that would be a great way to go. For my dad, I specifically wanted something related to history, as he loves the subject and just retired from being a middle school history teacher. After some googling and asking around I decided to go with Bonaventura Trips. The company is run by Tomás Hughes, a tourguide in his thirties (I think!) who does small tours. He has standard tours and custom tours that he tailors to the wishes of each client.

My dad spent a day with him (from 9am to 7pm!) and absolutely loved it. They started at a café with an intro class to Argentine history, and then visited the typical famous sights around the city, starting in La Boca, which were then put into context with the history they had already discussed. They also went to some parts of town that most tours do not include (Tomás wants to keep it secret, though!) They had lunch together, and at some point in the afternoon they also stopped for coffee and cake (perfect for my dad!) A great day.

With my mother, I joined in, and we decided to do Tomás’ tour of Tigre. I am rather lukewarm when it comes to Tigre, it is so crowded on the weekends and it feels much hotter than the city even, but the forecast was quite nice (26 degrees) and we were going on a Friday, so I figured it would be nice. And it was fantastic! Tomás picked us up at 9am in his comfortable car, and we drove directly to the marina where he keeps his boat. Going on a tour of the Tigre Delta in a small boat is perfect, because you can go into a lot of narrow and shallow canals where you can’t go with a group. Because it wasn’t too hot, it was so comfortable and the sun and wind felt great. One of my favourite parts was going on the larger canals towards Buenos Aires; we were zooming down the canals with nobody else around.

After the lovely tour we had lunch in Tigre, very nice, before seeing a little bit of the town. From there we started the drive back, seeing some of San Isidro as well, and part of the coastline. We then went to a café in Belgrano for coffee, Cokes, and cake, and the obligatory history lesson! Tomás manages to make Argentine history easy to understand and we enjoyed it so much. He cracks jokes all the time so we laughed all day. Sometimes he speaks so fast that his English becomes rather difficult to understand, but that is only because he has so much he wants to say!

I cannot recommend his tours highly enough, so personal, fun, and comfortable. And I am writing this without having received any bribes! 🙂 Once again, Bonaventura Trips.