Mountainbikecolombia Reviews 2

I met Marcel and Johana well over a year ago. Marcel comes across as a real stand-up guy who is helping indigenous people in the Amazon. He says he is a retired pilot, has a fishing business in Costa Rica and a 14 million USD house in California. With that wealth he wants to make a difference.

The first trip I did was the zipline one, which was great. But afterwards, Marcel asked me to write a 5-star review for MTB Colombia, the restaurant and his shop. In fact, I am certain that many of the Google Maps reviews were written by Marcel and he asked friends to post them. I also know some of his responses to posts contain pure lies, because I was on the same trips.

I also found out a year later, when checking the website, that Marcel charged me double for the zipline tour ($600 instead of $300). However, the Amazon trip was far worse.

This "humanitarian expedition" was supposed to start with a cargo flight, but instead we took a 24-hour bus to San José del Guaviare. The first two hours of day 1 were great: we rode a jungle track and visited an old cocaine lab. But the rest was a disaster and felt increasingly fraudulent.

Marcel's "indigenous guide" was actually someone who works for him. In two days he spoke for 5 mins about some cave paintings. The rest of the time he slowed us down cycling because he was so hungover.

On days 2 & 3 in San José we rode large roads and did tourist activities recommended in the 2017 Lonely Planet, though Marcel claimed constantly that it was an authentic Amazon adventure.

We then got stuck in San José due to confrontation between FARC and
the government. Marcel made it sound as if we could get shot going out to eat, but locals later told us these issues did not affect us in the slightest.

Even so, after two days of sitting around doing nothing, Marcel moved us to Mitú. He didn't even pay to bring his bike for the other client on the flight; instead, he rented one there for $7 a day. Its gears hardly worked and the handle bars twisted round.

In Mitu, Marcel promised us singletrack trails in the jungle, but only took us on an 80km ride with nothing to eat but small bags of nuts. Motorbikes and trucks passed us all day and we were following the power lines.

Following more FARC activity, Marcel left early, again with us having done next to nothing. We later befriended the State Secretary, who told us these security issues did not affect us either. Marcel's response to such comments is that this is all part of travel in the Amazon, but in reality he is a serial liar who knows next to nothing about proper travel.

In the three days by ourselves, we did vastly more than Marcel organised in nine and finally spent time in the jungle. We also found out he had lied repeatedly and had made up slanderous stories about local guides as an excuse not to hire them.

Now the issue of payment. I had been friends with Marcel for over a year and had brought down a new MacBook plus drone and bike parts for him from the US. After the trip, Marcel deleted our entire chat on Telegram (which permanently deletes the conversation for all parties) and claimed the laptop was payment for him helping me find a house in Guatapé. (He barely did anything and I've since got back the house deposit, all because of Marcel.) He fabricated a story about the Amazon trip and the laptop that benefitted him but was never what we agreed.

In short, we spent most of the Amazon trip doing nothing, Marcel tricked me out of thousands of dollars and lied repeatedly, and the humanitarian projects seem to cover up an insincere, shady business. Don't be deceived by Marcel's photos and stories - he lies constantly.

In my experience, this company is shady & dishonest and its philanthropic work masks a shameful focus on excessive profit.

First, DON'T trust the Google Maps rating. Halfway through the free bike ride, Marcel (the face of MTB Colombia) tells people the price is to leave good reviews for his cycling company, his restaurant and his shop.

Sadly, since the free ride was superb and Marcel seemed a great guy, I ignored this red flag and signed on for the $2000 Amazon trip. For those who don't want to read the full review below, the key points are that it was an absolute farce and felt intensely fraudulent. Almost everything focused on cost-cutting, the humanitarian projects largely appear to function as a smokescreen for charging an exorbitant price, and Marcel told us lots of false information, including regarding his own name.

The 'expedition' got off to an unfortunate start: Marcel forgot the card reader, forcing me to withdraw $2000 and pay in cash, which was a real hassle.

We started in San José del Guaviare, where we stayed in one of the cheapest hotels in town. Despite promises of riding 'ancestral trails' in the jungle, we spent two days cycling on a dirt road, being overtaken by pickup trucks. When we told Marcel this is not what he promised, he simply insisted that we were 'in the Amazon.'

Because of security reasons, we had to relocate to Mitú on our fourth day. Marcel had said there were just five miles of concrete road there, then jungle trails left and right. But what did we do? We cycled 80km on the main road in the throbbing heat.

Let me recapitulate a very telling conversation we had that evening:

Me: You said you didn't need a guide for the trails on this side of the river and that there were jungle trails everywhere.
Marcel: Correct.
Me: Then why did we only cycle on the main road?
Marcel: Because I don't know the jungle trails.
Me: But you said you did! Riding the main road is not an authentic Amazon experience.
Marcel: But you were still in the Amazon! Any animal could have walked out onto that road!

Things only got worse and shadier. In fact, I came to doubt the sincerity of Mountain Bike Colombia's commitment to its humanitarian projects with Indigenous communities for several reasons:

1) Marcel refused to employ a local guide, saying some Indigenous people take too many drugs and therefore cannot easily be trusted.
2) When we asked to take a jungle path, he said, 'No, there are cannibals down there,' which is profoundly distasteful.
3) While Marcel tells the Indigenous communities that he takes no cut from the sale of their crafts in Guatapé (I helped translate), he told us that he adds 35% on whatever price they tell him. Some of this surely goes to cover transportation, but he still lied to the community's representative.

By this point, it was not only obvious that Marcel was cutting costs at almost every opportunity; things were also feeling very, very underhand. Marcel had promised to extend the trip to make up for a logistical mistake and for all the wasted time resulting from the security issues. However, he later came to me and said he was 'over budget' and 'making a loss.' I had the distinct impression that he was trying to solicit yet more money from me, and he ended up using the alleged financial difficulties as an excuse for leaving early.

We subsequently calculated the costs of the trip (using the numbers Marcel had told us, many of which turned out to be inflated), and it became abundantly clear that he was making excellent money, even with the programme change. On a trip that goes to plan, our calculations suggest he makes a roughly 70% profit.

Even more worryingly, we later learnt from local guides that Marcel had given us lots of false information about the geography of the area, among other things. For instance, one supposed 'ancestral trail' was actually a path hacked out for the telephone lines.

We even found out that Marcel - in a conversation about full, real names - had lied about his legal name: he signed into the hotel using a name he had never mentioned. Things only got dodgier from there, but this review is long enough already.

In sum, I cannot overstate just how fraudulent everything felt - it was basically a journey of uncovering falsehoods - and the experience poisoned my entire travels in Colombia.

P. S. Marcel changed the website description after our trip and I never received compensation. He also deletes low reviews or, more likely, hires a company to do so. This review on Google Maps will surely go, too.

In response to Marcel's reply to my review on Google Maps, he is lying. The person in the photo isn't a guide: we works for Marcel and arrived hungover to the bike ride. He even told us the community we were going to meet is one you can pay so they do a dance - so much for an 'unscripted' trip. Don't believe M.'s lies.