Ecuador and Galapagos holiday
This trip can be tailormade to create a unique holiday for your individual requirements by travel experts with intimate knowledge of the destination. It is a more luxurious trip that will suit those who enjoy immersing themselves in new cultures and environments before relaxing in comfort in some of the best and most characterful local accommodation! Quality and value are the hallmark of these trips.
How this holiday makes a difference
Environment
We have carefully designed this holiday to represent the full diversity of Ecuador. In the cloudforest the lodge is completely hand built with local materials. Much of the food is grown organically on site & the lodge generally operates on strict sustainable principles.
We work with a selection of boats in the Galapagos, carefully chosen for their sustainable credentials. In all cases we pay for you to become a benefactor of the Galapagos Conservation Trust for a full year. The GCT issues guidelines as to the sorts of tourist visits that have least impact on the sites - those guidelines are that small boats, owned and operated locally, are the best bet for the preservation of the Galapagos.
Most of our boats are SmartVoyager certified. Boats are only able to gain this accreditation by meeting a set of strict conservation standards for protecting the environment & wildlife. We only use naturalist guides trained and licensed by the Galapagos Natural Park Service and the Charles Darwin Research Station.
Community
The lodge we work with in the Amazon is the only one in Ecuador to be both owned and run by the local community. You meet members of the local community in their village during your stay. Host families are rotated in order that every member of the local community benefits from the tourism to the lodge.
We recommend our favourite first class yachts in the Galapagos. In general, the boat owners and most of the crew on our boats come from the islands, which makes the enterprise sustainable and of economic benefit to the local community.