How to book an Andean Trails holiday
We’re here to help you plan and book your holiday to South America.
Don’t worry about the practical steps, our guide here will walk you through the Andean Trails booking process.
How to book with Andean Trails – a brief overview
More information
1. Get in touch
It seems obvious but it’s always advisable to contact us by email or on +44 (0)131 4677086 before making a booking online.
We may need to check for spaces for your chosen dates on your preferred Galapagos cruise boat, or that there are still Inca Trail permits available.
At any stage of the booking process you can get in touch to ask questions, make amendments to bookings or talk through the trip.
2. Plan your trip
We’re experts at tailor made and group holidays and we love talking to people about our trips, destination countries and hotel options.
Providing lots of options, prices and details to outline itineraries is our speciality and we’re more than happy to look at as many ideas as you wish. Most quotes come with a detailed itinerary so you can get a real feel for what you are booking.
This process – which can be complicate and lengthy, depending on numbers of countries and sites you wish to visit, group size etc – usually involves several emails, a phone call or two or face to face chats in our office.
Sometimes it’s a good idea to get hotels/flights/Galapagos boats on hold to make sure that availability doesn’t disappear.
3. Booking
Hoorah!
Through your ideas, dreams and work and our advice you’ve settled on the itinerary for your trip and are ready to book.
Flights will need to be paid for in full to issue them and we ask for a 30% non-refundable deposit as well as a completed booking form for all passengers.
We accept card payments in GBP sterling and in USD, plus bank transfers in many currencies from USD to Rand to AUSD and more (contact us for a full list).
4. Confirmation email
After the payment and booking form has been received, we reserve all services for you and send you a confirmation email.
This reconfirms all services included and not included and is accompanied by an invoice, detailed itinerary, kit list and extra information about the countries you’ll be visiting.
Bookings by UK customers with flights are ATOL protected and you will also receive an ATOL receipt.
5. Balance due
The final balance of your trip is due 8 to 12 weeks before departure depending on the tour you booked. You can pay it off earlier if you wish and we generally send a reminder near the payment deadline.
6. Travel Information document
Some 2-3 weeks before you travel we’ll email you a final word document full of important information to print off and take away with you.
Names, addresses and contact numbers for our representatives/hotels/guides are contained within these instructions, as well as timings, logistics and arrival advice for some countries.
Any who have booked flights will find their e-ticket numbers/locator codes and final flight times here too. Flight times can change in South America and it’s always worth double checking on departure day.
We recommend that you save a copy in your email account just in case you lose the paper copy while travelling.
Please contact us with any doubts or questions you may have once you’ve had a good read through the instructions.
7. HOLIDAY!
Check-in, fly off and enjoy!
8. Welcome back home
Once you’re back home we drop you a quick email to see how everything has gone.
We love to hear about your adventures and all feedback, good or bad, to help us to improve, as well as see any top snaps or videos of your dream trip to South America.
9. Go back to stage 1
We’re sure you’ll want to go back – so drop us a line!
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Get in Touch
+44 (0)131 378 5593
+44 (0)131 554 6025
info@andeantrails.co.uk
The high point was a sea lion swimming with us whilst snorkelling off Cape Rosa amongst the lava ‘tunnels’. We have a video of this taken by the snorkel leader playing on our digital frame at home. The low point were the Avianca flights out and back to Galapagos from Ecuador mainland – an airline & staff that really don’t care about you! The day tours were all excellent – sometimes the description was a little vague – for example the Volcano tour on Santa Cruz was a 5 hour 10 mile hike on muddy paths and uneven lava fields, with only a couple of short stops, that needed a good level of fitness but was pitched as a 2 to 4 hour ‘walk’. Food on some tours was a little basic and not very vegan whilst on others it was superb, e.g. the vegan vegetable rice served on one of the boat tours. The highlights were the snorkelling trip to Cape Rosa tunnels and the visit to the Bartolome Island, plus the small plane trip back from Isabela to Santa Cruz. The guides were all very knowledgeable and friendly – William and Martin stood out. We feel we benefited the local people. We had lots of feedback from locals thanking us for staying on land rather than going on one of the boat cruises What we would do differently is probably fly between islands rather than taking the speedboat – and perhaps fly to a third island as we had long enough there to spend three days on a third island (Cristobal?) We chose Andean Trails because it felt like a focused agency that specialised in the area and we liked Kat!
Prof Bob
We had a wonderful time in Galapagos. We really appreciated the guide we had: he gave us so much information, he made us feel safe and took us to the most spectacular snorkelling sessions. I can’t describe any low points. Everything went very smoothly: starting from Quito airport, the welcome in Baltra, the boat and the whole crew. The crew did their best to accommodate all our requests and desires. The only thing I would do differently next time is choose a longer holiday :).
A Calinici