I am going in July and really need to get booking it up as it's only 15 weeks away (yay!)......... but who is the best company to go with???
I'm looking to do the same thing in October. I will be booking my hike through STA travel and I think it is GAP adventures that actually run the trek.
From my understanding (I'm yet to book) tours of about 7 people leave every day so I don't think you'll be bogged down by a large group. The price of the trip I'm looking at is £459 and that is for the mainstream tour.
It had been recommended to me to take the Lares Independent Trek - which is also available through STA travel - but is considerably more expensive (nearer £600 off the top of my head) but well off the beaten track I'm led to believe.
Hey, i've just been reading in Lonely planet, and they say that the most popular would be;
http://ecoinka.com/adventures/
this is pretty expensive, but they are writing you will get a unique experience.
And then you have Enigma - www.enigmaperu.com.
llamapath - www.llamapath.com
Peru Treks - www.perutreks.com
Q'ente - www.qente.com
SAS - www.sastravelperu.com
This is the ones that i found in Lonelyplanet, so they better be good , but i haven't had any experience myself with these.
But hey, does anyone know.. do you have to take a flight? Everywhere i see it stands to take a flight from somewhere .. and blabla.. wouldn't this be really expensive in that case??
I went went with SAS a few years ago and they were great. There was not one thing to complain about.
I went with Llama Path a few years ago and they were great. My friend went with United Mice and also recommended them.
Just a word of warning- if it seems much cheaper than all the other companies, it's cheaper for a reason. You don't want to end up with the food running out or the sleeping bags being full of bedbugs etc, so much cheaper than others usually equals bad news.
We just came back from the inkatrail that we booked through "Bio Andean Expeditions". The trail was really beautifull and the service was good as well. What wasn´t very nice was, that when we started to talk to the other people from our group we found out that we had booked from 3 different companies. The other guys that had booked through "big foot" and "cusco exploriors" and had only paid 330 dollars and we had booked through "Bio Andean Expeditions" and had paid 480 dollars. Though the very big price difference "Bio Andean Expeditions" hadn´t provided us a better service than the others. So even though all of us got picked up by the same bus, driven to the same place, had the same guide all the way, ate the same food, lived in the same tents, had the same amount of porters and en generel had all the same things provided, we still had to pay 150 dollars more than the guys from our groups that had been smarter to book the trail through cheaper companies.
We also asked the guide if he, and the porters got paid more from our company than the other 2 and he said that they got paid the same amount from all 3 companies.
When we went down to the "Bio Andean Expeditions" office and asked why we had to pay that much more money for the exact same service, a guy from the company started talking about that all the other companies that does the inca trail at the price of 330 were cheating with the taxes. The taxes he told us, are 80 dollars per person so when we wanted to know what the rest of the money up to the 150 dollars were spend on he asumed, that the companies that sell it to 330 dollars just enjoy to be poor, and not gain more money than 10 dollars per day......said in other words, "Bio Andean Expeditions" want to gain more money for themselves to keep than the other companies.
So all in all we had a very beautiful inca trip but we could have got the exact same incatrip 150 dollars cheaper if we hadn´t made the mistake of booking through "Bio Andean Expeditions".
Just for you other guys to know that the service isn´t necesarely better and the guide/porters doesn´t necesarrely get a better pay just because you pay more
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