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BootsnAll World Adventures is curious about the Adventure Companies you have used in South America. Were they good? Bad? Safe? Would you send friends and family with these this company? Did there guide take you down a Class Five rapid backwards?

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South America Tour Companies

Here is a chance to share your perspective and opinions to other travelers searching for information on adventure companies. No adventure company is too large or too small to review. The more information you share, the better travelers can make a decisions on if they should use these companies in the future.

The only one I've used is "Discover Brazil Tours" and they are beyond horrible. I mean they screwed up everything. I am still trying to get part of my money back from them. I lived and learned, word to the wise though.

That's a great idea, Donovan.


http://www.keith.gs

I used two tour companies, and my use comes with a caveat:

I was a single person looking for a tour with companies that liked groups. Its always a dicey thing at best to do so. It is best to find 3 or four like minded people to go with you, so your needs are looked after properly, if you have the time.

The first tour company I used was in Merida, Venezuela. It's called Gravity Tours, and I found them acceptable to good, with a few exceptions. I used them once on a tour on los Nevadas, and since the others cancelled, I went alone with my guide. It was fantastic, especially since my sense of direction is about zero for the most part. Thats why I don't hike mountains alone. It is possible to do with a group of your own, if you have a trail map and a sense of direction. That doesn't mean its recommended.

The other tour I took with them, based upon the first, was the Los Llanos tour. That was a mitigated disaster. We were told we'd have an experienced guide, in fact we were told we'd have the same great guide I had in Los Nevados. Three of us were stuck with a bunch of adventure climbers, and shared a difficult but exciting white water experience with them, one I would have given a miss on, since I had already done white water rafting, and wanted to use the time in Los LLanos.

We then separated, and the experienced guide was diverted from us. We were dumped with our DRIVER, who's english was poor at best. Luckily, all three of us spoke good Spanish. Still, it wasn't much help when we asked the name of a bird and was given the Spanish name, one we'd be sure to forget in a few seconds, one which we had no dictionary handy for translation. I've found that dictionaries are of limited use in quick moving tours.

We ended up in a poor looking farm, were fed meager rations at best, and were asked to spend more than four hours on a horse tromping all over the marshy grasslands AFTER all of us insisted that four hours of being on horseback was more than enough. None of us were bred to the saddle, and we liked walking normally. All of us had been on horseback before, so the experience was not entirely new.

We were already missing a day on the way there, since the driver, who owned his car, had some irregularities in his papers, and he didn't have the money to pay off the Venezuelan border patrolmen who stopped him. We only proceeded after one of us gave the driver some money to pass on to the customs officer. The driver was never really clear on what was wrong with his papers, even though our Spanish was good enough to understand whatever he had to say.

Well, the driver knew his stuff, sort of. Getting information out of him was like pulling teeth in a foriegn language, and the names were invariably in Spanish. I don't blame him. He was a driver, not a guide after all.

The food? Let's just say that the best meal we had was when I and my cohorts caught about 18 tiny piranha and they were cooked up for us. Besides that it was more like rice and beans.

We were treated to the torturing of a tiny cayman so we could take pictures of it, there were no snakes to be found, and our boat ride to see the dolphins and birdlife was destroyed by the boat motor. It's hard to hear the sounds of nature over a 60 horsepower engine.

I recommended to anyone going to Los Llanos for the bird life to get an extra day, and have the guide rent canoes or kayaks!!! Go with a bird loving group by all means, since they'll know as much as the guides and know the habits of the birds as well as many guides. The birds were fantastic, what we saw but not heard of them.

The other factor had nothing to do with the guide, and a lot to do with the company. My companions spent the entire time chattering away in either Spanish or German, and I was sorry when they chose Spanish. The conversation was particularly un-exciting, and nothing I'd want to hear or take part in. They chattered over the birds, they chattered over the calm and peace of the LLanos, and they chattered in the car. In fact, I can't remember a time when they weren't chattering at each other, up to the time they went to bed.

As I said, its good to know WHO you are taking a tour with before you go.

When we got back from the tour, the director apologised, and said that three people were not enough to justify sending a real guide on the trip. We responded that if we had KNOWN we'd be stuck with the driver, we wouldn't have gone at all, and forewarning would have been nice. It was not a good scene. He apologised, and we left it at that. There was no offer of a good tour to replace the one we took. He didn't want to even give a small refund. It was this stinginess that stung most of all, really, though I don't know what I should expect, really.

The second tour I took had mixed reviews. it was with Adrenaline Tours based in ...(). It was a staging area for the Gran Sabana.

The guide, Dominic, was lively and informative. He took us on trips down waterfall areas which were marginally dangerous, but doable if one had a sense of balance and adventure. It was magnificent. He was open to sleeping in the open outside a hostel by a waterfall when we expressed such a desire. That was wonderful.

He then did something which I must give a red light on. He took us to a waterslide area. I lagged behind a bit, but arrived well in time. He'd told everyone else beforehand that they had to keep their hands up in the air or on their chest down a fast waterslide down smooth but irregular rocks.

He did not warn me. The next thing you know I had some jammed or minutely fractured bones in my left hand. I couldn't use it afterwards, though I only had it looked at after I went home, a week later. Hand injuries are notoriously hard to treat in most cases, even with diagnostics.

I thought I was alone in this, but then he said something a little unforgiveable. He told me that at least one person hurt themselves on this part of the tour almost every time. I thought I was alone until a companion told me she'd broken a finger as well but "didn't want to complain" Heck, she even used it climbing down a rockface without complaint. I wish I had that kind of pain tolerance, though one has to wonder about the long term effect on the finger and hand.

For goodnesses sake, if there is this kind of record, TELL the clients before they embark upon the activity in the very least!!!!

If you take this part of the tour- do not go down the waterslide, and if you do, do not go head first or put your hands at your side.