ANDES TO AMAZON

Our Clients’ Reviews

1 | 2

• 

  Robert Atkinson

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written October 2011

  The trip surpassed my expectations. An outstanding country with a huge variety of scenery, peoples, culture and experiences.  The trip was well paced yet packed with experiences.  Great stuff and incredible value for money.Mountains, check. Rainforest, check. Wildlife & Birds, check, Great food, check. Cities, check. Photo opportunities, check. I came away inspired to go back and to see more. Thanks Exodus! 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  It is difficult to pick out one moment on this trip, so I have to resort to two.

  The first one was the long descent from Quito via the Papallacta Pass down to the Rainforest. A stunning journey with changing landscapes, changing weather and temperatures and changing people as the day went on. The long journey was punctuated by a tasty yet unexpected lunch in the hills and culminated in a transfer to a long boat for a high speed transfer on the brown waters of the Amazon Basin to our rainforest lodge, to be greeted by large groups of monkeys swinging throught the trees.  Really made me realise why I love to travel.

  The second one was provided by one our group. An older gentleman who I spent time talking to and listening to his life and experiences. Made you realise that your life is in your hands and you can do so much with your time to help others and still have a fulfilling life of your own.

  What did you think of your group leader?

  Our tour leader Fabian is a real character. Like a loveable rogue and friend, he was full of stories and anecdotes and clearly showed a passion for his country, bringing things to life and painting pictures with his words.

  He was also full of practical advice and dealt well with the group. Really enjoyed him leading us and he helped to make the trip come alive with his humour and knowledge.

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  Be prepared for all weathers and take your walking boots. It will be hot and cold, dry and humid, wet and changeable, so lots of thin layers and waterprrofs plus good footwear.

  For the rainforest, cover up well, especially on the night walks and have bite cream and bite prevention with you at all times.

  Take your own plug for sinks

  US adapter for electricity

  Take all of your US dollars in cash - no notes bigger than US$20s

  Take lots of plastic bags with you, useful for putting damp clothing and mucky boots in

  Meal portions are generous in general so beware over ordering

  Be aware of altitude sickness - coca tea and aspirin at the ready - I suffered with this.

  A bit of basic Spanish will really help, so brush up on your vocabulary

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  On this trip you have to go for it.  The itinerary is packed to the gunnels with things to do and there are also long periods of travelling. Grab every chance you can to exlpre and do things and plan to fill your free time.

  Be ready with your camera at any time to try and catch the birds and wildlife, people and places. Ecuador is another world to the UK once you are out of the city centres and just begs to be snapped and explored.

  The only downside of the trip is that you are no longer able to ride on the top of the Devil's nose train, so ignore the pictures printed in the brochure or on line. Instead you take the journey in the comfort of a carriage. Not quite the all action adventure you may imagine, but better you know before you go tham find out on arrival.

   
• 

  Boyd Taylor

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written October 2011

  Ecuador proved to be a very interesting country and was well worth a visit. There is a lot of travelling involved in this holiday, but how else can you get to see so much? 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  The visit to the rain forest was the most exciting part of the trip for my wife and I, although she did go to bed fully clothed and with a hat on in the sweltering heat due to all the insects (they were mostly outside the hut and not inside but that did not make any difference). The boat ride through the mangrove swamps was excellent as we saw more birds on that day than all the previous days put together, it was amazing. It was also very interesting and moving seeing all the old people in their traditional clothes and in the bustling markets. Every day brought a new experience, including the visit to the nature reserve at over 14,000 feet in the Andes and the four hour road decent down from the summit (yes 4 hours, I've never seen such  a long hill) was someting I'll never forget. Interestingly a water bottle I drank empty and sealed up at the top was squashed flat by the increased air pressure by the time we arrived at the bottom!

  What did you think of your group leader?

  The group leader (Fabian) was excellent, very laid back and unflappable, knowledgable and helpful. A good leader. Mention must also be made of the driver (Roberto) who drove us for the full two weeks, he was excellent and we all felt very safe and comfortable in his hands.

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  I took lots of shorts to wear and hardly wore them at all, it was either too cold (in the high Andes) or the sun was too scorching. Long, cool pants are the best. A wide brimmed hat is a must. As the walks were only billed as short we made the mistake of not taking the right footwear, make sure you take good strong walking trainers or lightweight walking boots.

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  The people of Ecuador are very friendly and accomodating. some even shouted "Welcome to Ecuador, thank you for visiting our country"

  Although not a complaint, one slightly disappointing aspect was the food. We expected exotic and spicy dishes and they turned out to be rather plain. Don't let that put you off though, everything was good and enjoyable, it's a matter of opinion I suppose!

  The accomodation was of a very high standard throughout, especially the Hacienda for the first three nights. The exception being the rain forest lodge which was more basic than expected. Although it did not bother us, the lack of electricity in the rooms should be mentioned in the brochure. However that was all part of the experience and we enjoyed the stay there immensly.

  The (expected) tips did add rather a lot of cost to the trip, be prepared to budget for them!

   
• 

  Joseph Grima

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written June 2011

  Overall quite a good trip but in my opinion lacking more time in interesting parts of the country - mainly the rainforest. 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  All the wild places and valleys and mountains plus the volcanoes and the rainforest.

  What did you think of your group leader?

  !0 out of 10 for knowledge, patience, tolerance and being very easy going.

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  Be prepared for a diverse selection of environments and places of interest.

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  Will be using Exodus once again in the very near future!

   
• 

  Barbara Bourke

  ANDES TO AMAZON June 2011

  

  Written June 2011

  This was a fabulous trip which exceeded expectations. Mainland Ecuador tends to go under the radar - definitely a mistake. This trip was full of variety - Ecuador is a diverse country indeed. From jungle to volcanoes to paramos to calderas to markets to World Heritage towns - this trip had a huge variety of activities and sights.  

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  Seeing 4 volcanoes at once. Also the Cajas National Park was simply amazing for its scenery and vegetation. And I loved seeing the scarlet macaws.  

  What did you think of your group leader?

  Javier was superb. He was very knowledgeable and great fun to be with. We even enjoyed his jokes! He was always looking for ways to improve our experience. His command of English was very good and he gave us a real insight into Ecuadorian life. A wonderful guide. 

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  Make sure that you take a headlight for the jungle (there is no electricity in the chalets). Also take thick socks - we wore gumboots/wellingtons twice for muddy walks and thick socks made them much more comfortable. Also, make sure you take your hiking boots or good walking shoes/trainers - we did more walking than expected - all optional - I thought the walking greatly added to the experience. 

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  A wonderful trip - don't hesitate!

   
• 

  Irene Aylott

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written March 2011

  A thoroughly enjoyable tour that encompassed such varied landscapes and people, as Ecuador covers a relatively small area compared to many other South American countries. We travelled from the chilly high Andes to the heat of the jungle and Pacific coast. Our guide (Pablo) was excellent. Our driver (Nelson) was careful and made us feel secure. Distances each day were not too great and most roads were good. Our accommodation and food were also good throughout. A great way to learn about and see Ecuador. 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  There were many high points - from the high mountains and snow covered volcanoes, beautiful landscapes, varied agriculture, colourful markets, varied peoples in the local dress and the delightful old towns within Quito and Cuenca. The railway journey on the rebuilt track from Alausi to the Devil's Nose switch back was great fun for everyone (not just for railway fans).

  What did you think of your group leader?

  Pablo was a professional - knowlegable, helpful and considerate. Cosmopolitan in outlook with excellent English. He made situations work for the benefit of the whole group on many occasions.

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  Take varied clothing as it can be cold as well as hot. The 3 night stop on arrival at Pantavi Hacienda was good and helped overcome the effect of the long journey. 

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  It would have been nice to stop at Leito Hacienda for a second night or to find a hotel nearer Alausi rather than stopping in Riobamba.

   
• 

  Anne Fairlie

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written August 2010

  It is a country of tremendous natural beauty and this trip touches many of these places. It is sometimes a challenge to see these delights through the weather ....... but it is a thriving land … of imagination! Superb trip. 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  Guamote market was the highlight for most of us on the trip. Juts local people going about their daily chores buying goods, chatting with friends, eating out at the local stalls. A terrific look into Ecuador life.

  What did you think of your group leader?

  Very personable guy. Always looking for the road less travelled to explore.

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  Take some warm clothes as, even though you are on the equator, you are at higher altitiudes so you will need them. Make sure you visit the museum at the Equator outside of Quito. It gives you a good look into the different indigenous peoples living all over Ecuador.  Go during June - Sept as the whales are fantastic.

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  Quito is as delightful as I remember and a great walking city. We took a walking tour with Pablo our Exodus guide today - left about 10 and got back about 2:30. You do learn so much more when with someone. As it is Sunday, many people were gathered in the main square; lots of music, families out walking, ice cream sellers doing a busy trade with people wearing their best! Great fun. A Cuban restaurant was on the agenda for the first group meal for the 8 of us.  After a couple more days in the city, we the set off westwards towards Cotopaxi Mountain. Now you would think that that part about the mountain would not be that interesting to me, and you are right to some degree. Except ... we took the "back way" up to the setting-off point for trekkers. So it was about one hour or 1.5 hrs on a cobbled road that must have taken ages to build and level.
  
  Anyway, families live right up to the side of the road. They are mainly subsistence farmers and have no "modern" tools or machinery to help. Our tour leader told us that the smallest tractor here costs $80,000 USD. So that is not an option of course. There was lots of human activity in the fields. Because they live virtually on the equator there is no summer or winter - the summer months of June July August mean less rain and less wind. Cows are really big here so at least they have milk and can make their own cheese etc. The people we saw were working in the fields hoeing and pulling crops and milking cows and chatting with friends while kids ran around and … we had window into Ecuadorean life. They use horses here as well as some donkeys. We saw this "cowboy" waiting to cross the road with his horse. He had the most amazing chaps that were made from horse hair as they were quite shaggy with long strands. Quite beautiful looking. Yesterday when we were at the museum at the Equator, we read about the 13 indigenous peoples living in Ecuador. And then today to see some people actually living as described yesterday was fantastic.
  
  At about noon we got to our “destination” - the parking lot for the trekkers for Cotopaxi. The summit is 5890 meters high and you can climb there in one day. There is a refugio about 200 meters above the parking lot. You can sleep there and then climb up and back in one day. One of the people in our group paid for a tour to do this before joining ours. Unfortunately the weather prevented all the climbers that day (about 50 in all) from getting to the top. Well, today we certainly understood this better as the driving winds were incredible. Swirling dust kept us from spending too long in the parking lot. The clouds did us a favour and cleared (mostly) so we got a good idea of the glacier size and the tough climb it would be to the top.  
  
  Pablo says that 30 years ago there were 15 "permanent" glaciers in Ecuador. Now there are only 9 "permanent" glaciers. 
  
  After our foray into the whirlwind on Cotopaxi we jumped gratefully back into the van and drove to a lake at the bottom. The wind was less relentless here so we enjoyed a box lunch and a walk around the lake to see the nesting birds.
  
  After our break, we joined the Pan American Highway to our stop in Riobamba. This highway is quite a feat of hard work - it stretches from Alaska to the bottom end of Chile with a small break in Panama as the Darien Gap area is just not passable by vehicle.
  
  The train journey was the one called the Devil´s Nose. This is due to the switchback tracks through a narrow canyon in the Andes. People clamber up on top of the train so they can see the whole world as they travel along. Unfortunately it is under construction as it has been off and on for years so we did not get to journey very far by train. It stopped twice on the 2 hour journey we did take. At each stop, everyone is allowed to disembark and go for a short tour through the town(s) and then jump back on board and continue on. Quite good fun. It was a very rural part of the country so again we were able to see up close the homes of the subsistence farmers. The land is very green - did I mention it rains a lot here? - and the train takes you through a beautiful part of the lowlands.     The next day was another banner day. We travelled to a small town called Guamote. In fact we had stopped here on the train and it seemed a quiet little nothing town. It comes alive on Thursdays - market day! Wow.... a serious rival to the market in Kashgar China. They sell lots of household things. They have a big animal market where cows and horses are the main animals being sold and traded. There is at the other corner of town a small animal market where the sheep, guinea pigs, chickens and rabbits are sold. This was mainly hosted by the women whereas the men were at the big animal area. And in between you have all manner of sales people both in shops and stalls parked in the middle of the road: cell phones (very popular with the teen boys), woven garments; fried bananas and cheese empanadas cooked while you waited ( yummy!); toys for kids; chaps for the cowboys in the area; veggies; days-old fish that come by truck from Guayaquil on the coast (no thanks!); hats (Panama hats originate here in Ecuador not Panama); beautiful primitive-looking pins for the women to use to keep their shawls together at the front (I bought one); and it goes on and on for 5 or 6 streets. Fantastic to wander about where no one hassles you - in fact we had an older women and her teenage daughter followed us just because they were curious (then they told my friend she paid too much for a woven purse). What was so funny to watch was when the train had to leave town - it had circled around outside the market area and then had to return right down the centre of the market on the track.... so they quickly moved their stall for one of the train cars and then put their stall back only to have to move it 6 or 7 minutes later when the next train cabin came through. And the colours the women wear: bright reds and oranges and yellows and blues.... you just know buying something like that will look all wrong when you get it home.        It usually rains a bit every day but since it is such a regular occurrence they do not call it rain - they call it “weather”. Rain is when it is hard and lasts for a long time. And so it did for the next 3 days. We reluctantly left Guamote to drive up another mountain - the tallest in the country called Chimborazo - but this time, we did not even make it to the parking lot. We got to the turn-off and Pablo asked everyone if they really still wanted to drive up there. It was pissing with rain, you could barely see that we were on a mountain and we still had 3 hours of driving without the side trip. We voted to skip it.  One of the most stunning drives of the whole tour rounded out the day to our next overnight stop - Banos. We drove through the mountain canyons for the next few hours - greenery everywhere, small farmers tending their fields and beautiful colours of their clothes brightening the landscape.     A very good day indeed. We stayed in an absolutely beautiful setting for the next 2 nights outside a funky town called Banos. It never stopped raining the whole time. Seriously. At 10 am the group except for 2 of us set off on a 3 hour hike... yes, pouring rain and uphill! The other woman chose to go horseback riding - yes, pouring rain and also uphill!  Me - well turns out this hotel has some spa services so I chose a 90 minute massage! What is right about this picture?  Liana Lodge in the Amazon was our destination. “Liana” like the ropes that Tarzan used to swing on. Nice but simple rooms. No electricity in the rooms but strangely hot water.  Simple Ecuadorean food. The next day there was another 3 hour hike in the rain. But the morning was topped off by tubing in rubber tubes back to the hotel downriver using just the current. An afternoon walk on the neighbouring island of Anaconda to see the local farms was next and we were allowed into one house to see how they prepare the main food and drink each day.  Just a few interesting facts from Ecuador...--they are a huge exporter of roses. their roses have more petals than roses from other countries.-- 4000 of the world's 30,000 orchids are indigenous.-- Chimborazo is the highest mountain in the world if you measure from the centre of the earth due to the bulge at the Equator. Its peak is the closest to the sun from Earth!-- quinoa is a staple here.-- Pine trees and Eucalyptus trees have been planted all over some of the barren places in this central region of Ecuador. Unfortunately this was bad advice as both trees suck up water voraciously and have left these areas even more barren than before. They were originally chosen because they grow fast. -- Neither vicunas nor guinea pigs drink water. -- alpacas are sheared only once a year. On another stunning drive – this time back to Quito – we stopped at a hummingbird sanctuary. This was an amazing place as the feeders were everywhere and so were the birds. Many species of hummingbirds live in this area. If you put your hands on a feeder and stand quite still for a few minutes, the birds will actually land on your hands as they feed.  Our next stop was the Papallacta Hot Springs. It was a delight to be warm – and wet – after quite a few days of being cold and wet!   The last couple of days were spent on the coast in a little town called Puerto Lopez. We stayed at a wonderful guesthouse on the beach. We took a fantastic optional day trip out to Isla de la Plata. Many of our group had not been to the Galapagos so this visit gave them a good taste of what those famous islands have to offer. The highlight for me was seeing humpback whales on the ride out to the island. There is a whale migration during the months of June through September and we were lucky enough to see some whales doing a full breach as they showed off for the females in the area.  It is a country of tremendous natural beauty and this trip touches many of these places. It is sometimes a challenge to see these delights through the weather ....... but it is a thriving land … of imagination! Superb trip.

   
• 

  Patricia Selway

  ANDES TO AMAZON

  

  Written December 2009

  We have now been home for 5 weeks and only now are my feet back on the ground!  I have been on lots of your trips and have never been disappointed and this was not an exception.   It was like at least three different holidays rolled into one - so varied with not only snow clad volcanoes but also jungle and unbelievable beaches. 

  Read full review

  What was the most inspirational moment of your trip?

  It wasn't exactly a planned "Activity Holiday" but gave us the opportunity for numerous inspirational moments from riding horses in a volcanic crater, mountain biking down volcanic excape routes, body boarding in the Pacific Ocean to tubing down the Napo River in a rain storm 

  What did you think of your group leader?

  Our Group Leader ,Pablo was first class.   His English was exceptional which was a huge advantage to us as he took the time and trouble to explain everything  in great detail

  Do you have any advice for potential travellers?

  This holiday had lots of "optional" extras so to get the most out of it bring lots of extra cash!  you can avoid spending this but there is so much to see and do that isn't covered in the cost that you might lose out!

  Is there anything else you would like to add?

  The best part for me was finding a tarantula on the bathroom floor at the lodge in the jungle at 6.00am when I got up to go to the loo!  I felt that I had really arrived in South America!

   

1 | 2