Intrepid Travel
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Review of Galapagos Trip
I went in the Galapagos trip with this company in January 2024. I was asked to private review the trip after in an automated email , which I did in detail. I had a few issues I wanted to address but they did not even bother to respond to my review which they had solicited. A few issues: The hotel room on one of the islands was absolutely disgusting with dirt and hair and crumbs in every corner including the room and bathroom and millions of tiny little bugs got into cough candies, toothpaste and snacks if left out for more than 3 mins. They were in our bed sheets at night. The other hotels were very basic but perfectly fine for staying in on a trip like this. There was an issue with one of the travellers coming arriving very ill and no effort to even try to keep him isolated or masked in small quarters like the bus or at dinners or touching communal shared items, informing us etc , resulting in 80% of our group becoming ill and missing excursions of a lifetime. We realize people get sick but no effort was made by our guide to at least try to manage the ground zero guest or inform us to allow us to try and protect ourselves. The tour guide was amazing, she really did a wonderful job on the tour with the exception of the sick traveller and the below state of emergency. She really was very well educated and trained and was very entertaining. Intrepid does have a gem in her. We also had ZERO communication from Intrepid or our guide about the major events happening on the mainland of Ecuador while we were in Galapagos with plans to return to the mainland a couple of days later. The entire country was shut down for a state of emergency and as travellers we only found out about it when family from home contacted me and I brought it to the other travellers attention and I had to ask the group leader to address what is going on during breakfast. She didn’t bring it up and no emails or calls from intrepid for those travelling with them in the region. It’s like they wanted to ignore it and were very dismissive of it. We didn’t get any info from them for at least the first 24 hours (well after I asked questions) and even then they just copied and pasted what the government put out on their website. There were no offers to help anyone get home, help with changing flights/plans or to avoid travelling back through the mainland that was under a state of emergency and under lockdown due to riots etc. This should have been handled much better than it was. I wouldn’t travel with intrepid again just for the fact that they couldn’t do me the courtesy of a response to my private review. And they really didn’t address health and safety concerns between the state of emergency, the poor cleanliness and health of the group with a sick group member. Galapagos and Ecuador were both an amazing experience and I would certainly recommend travellers go and experience the wonders themselves.