Read this if travelling to Flores:

There are unfortunately a few rogue tour companies in Flores, Petén but one in particular is quite notorious and ruthless.

The company is called ‘Servicios Turismo Gran Jaguar 1’ and their office is in Calle de Union.

This company seems to mainly target shuttles coming in from longer distances.

If u are coming from the Mexican frontera, any local over night bus or from Belize etc please be aware of these people.

On the approach to San Benito/Santa Elena a few things may happen:

• You may change bus

• You may change drivers

• Or both

• You will then be driven to an ATM/cajero and told to take out money here

• Being told that there are none in Flores and that hostels/hotels/restaurants/tour offices deal in cash only

• Or if card is taken, the % fee is quite high

• They may engage in conversation with you to suss out ur plans and future movements

• You are then told you have arrived at your accommodation only for this to be a prior stop at their tour office

• Here they get u….hot, tired and not functioning on all cylinders, they push tours and transfers on u…

• Saying they’ll give u a good price because you’ve travelled from x place with them

• Saying availability is scarce

• Saying shuttles are limited

• Saying prices in town might be cheaper but buses aren’t as good

• Saying other companies aren’t punctual, don’t turn up

• Saying they can get better prices on flights

• The list goes on….

They know you have money and know what you want to do/go and they do all this quite fast, create a hype so that u panic and buy.

Once parted with cash and tickets issued, you are told there is no come back, no cancellation and no refunds.

You then get back on the bus and are taken to your accommodation where a feeling starts to creep up on u that you’ve just been swindled!

I took a wander round town and started asking for prices of the transfers I had booked and realised I’d paid double!

A quick google search and I am faced with an array of negative comments and warnings about this company.

The man running the show is this guy….Enrique Pop Chub aka Scar Face

His #2 I believe is called Vladimir and is a bit of a Vin Diesel lookalike (no pic sorry)

And this is the office they will take you too

I hope you will have stumbled across this post before falling prey to the con and scam tactics of this awful company.

If not, there is very little u can do. I got told not to contact the police – they can turn nasty and aggressive and have since read many a story to this effect.

Instead I was told to contact the Government tourist office – InGuat

The guy dealing with these complaints is more than aware of this man and his company. Whilst I was there, the file he had on him for the last 6 weeks was the size of the yellow pages.

I explained I had read posts dating back to 2014, that they and the police were more than aware of him – why was nothing being done? Good old fashioned corruption tactics and pay offs.

I spent 4 hours in total with the InGuat guy filling in forms and describing what happened. I was then taken to the Ministerio Público and went through everything again and then again to a different department.

The only thing that became abundantly clear during this process was how everyone knew of scar face and all almost shrugged to say – ‘oh and another’ as they asked what was going on.

The other thing that became clear and a huge factor as to why Enrique is still on the streets fleecing the unsuspecting tourist is down to the number of people he has on the inside, people he is paying off to keep him in business. This is the case for the police and those in the Ministerio Publico. I was sat near 2 people in this office who I was told take backhanders off him – it made me wonder if my file will even make it out of the office!

The guys at InGuat are trying to bring Enrique and his cronies down, but they have a tough job and with so many who should be helping to bring him to justice protecting him…I doubt very much anything will happen.

I just hope that people come across my post and those of others before they too get fleeced.

Transfers to Semuc cost ~ 150Q and the same from Semuc to Antigua. Do not pay more! This is correct as of Feb 2018

It wasn’t a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but more just the principle of it and being pissed off at falling for such a stupid school book tactic!