South America Explorer with Gapforce

I had an amazing experience of a lifetime. I would do it 100 more times if i could!

I met lovely and interesting people who impacted my life in incredible ways.

For me one the exciting memories was our trip to Mancora. The view was spectacular and I had a ball on the jet skies!

South America is an incredible continent and offers a diverse cultural experience. The program is structured in a manner which allowed us to experience these cultures in a way that I would never have been able to experience.

The coordinators, Jaimie and Joe were very professional, well organized and caring. For me, this was the first away from home without my family and being in a country so different from my comfort zone, they went out of their way to settle me in and looked out for me....and all the members of the group. They were really key in making the trip absolutely awesome.

Advise to future attendees: make sure you are fit and bring a lot of bug spray!!!!!!

This trip was definitely a once in a lifetime experience and I've had the most amazing time. Choosing just one moment would be extremely difficult as I loved every week and loved the diversity of each week. The leaders Joe and Jamie created a safe environment and provided the group with advice about the cities and different activities throughout the trip and made everyone feel very welcome! I would definitely recommend this trip and GapForce to others as it is a great way to travel and to meet new people.

So many amazing memories created on this trip! I thought it had great content & I really enjoyed everything we did, there were so many different things packed into a relatively short time. However, Gapforce was not great at providing information beforehand, and some incorrect information was given. Our leader also didn't speak any Spanish, which at times made interactions with locals a bit difficult. I also think the food budget was quite tight, and we weren't always provided with bottled water, although I was told before the trip I wouldn't need to bring chlorine tablets as water was ok to drink. There were a few other improvements I think could be made, but overall I had a great time & didn't want to go home. I met some great people, did things I never thought I would & pushed myself out of my comfort at times. I definitely want to return to South America in the future, and would recommend anyone to go there.

What and amazing experience met some incredible people and had some amazing experiences. Obviously some stuff sometimes went wrong but its South America what are people expecting? Cant wait to go back!!!

Leaders: very good, should be given raises and promotions, and probably take over the company all together
People on trip: very good
Office: very bad
Pre-trip information: was not happy with certain promises not kept.
Food: various (as we were promised three meals a day, was dissapointed with the lack of budgetted money given to us for food weekly.)
Lack of anaconda sightings: horrendous.

If you wish to hear more in depth, please email me.

I had an amazing time in South America and met some really great people. The team leaders, Nick and Hannah were really great. They were always looking out for us. Everything within the country was organised well due to the fact that Nick and Hannah were in charge.

However Gapforce were incredibly slow when it came to providing information. The staff back in the UK have very little knowledge of what the trip actually consists off and repeatedly gave wrong information to me and my fellow travelers. The food budget was a complete joke. This is no fault of the leaders but Gapforces fault. We were promised three meals per day. If I didn't have my own money, gapforce would have forced me to eat off the streets. After all the money that was given to Gapforce, I thought that this would be provided.

However the jungle experience was incredible and extremely grateful for having that opportunity. Met some great volunteers and was amazing to get so close to the animals.

Also, the galapagos trip was not organised very well, however that is Gapforce's fault for subcontracting that work to such an awful company with rude staff. However I had a great time there seeing the exotic animals and also scuba diving.

The nights out were really great, and had a really good time with all the people on the trip. All in all this trip was amazing and wish I could do it again.

I absolutely loved the trip and the people I was with. I had the best 2 months of my life. It was the hardest but also the most rewarding thing Ive ever done in my life. I will always remember this crazy trip and the amazing friends I made on it. I could go on and on, but I'd rather give a few tips to Gapforce on how they could improve for future trips:

1) Choose an easier trek to Machu Picchu or tell people you need some experience for the trek. As a beginner hiker, I was not prepared for that at all. Again, if I didnt have my amazing friends to drag me up those mountains, I would not have made it.
2) We should spend less time in the Amazon, and more time in Mancora, Lima and Banos. There were loads of fun activities we could've done in Banos. And we had no time to explore Perus capital.
3) Tell people before that nothing is included in the trip. We had to pay for almost every single excursion on this trip. Also, the allowance you gave us for food every week was not nearly enough for 3 meals a day! We gave you boat loads of money, and I honestly don't know where at least 70% of it went. Smh.
4) Cut the Shuar tribe from the trip completely. We spent a week doing nothing with a bunch of normal Ecuadorians, who on the last night dressed up like tribesmen and danced for us for about 20 minutes.
5) Pay your leaders better! They work SO MUCH harder than you realize.
6) The Galapagos....
a) Half the people didnt know about $125 entrance fee, that was, of course, not included.
b) We did not do a fraction of the activities we were supposed to do on the itinerary. The activities that we paid a lot of money for.
c) The program we used while at the Galapagos was a hot mess and they were very rude to us. And they rationed us $5 per meal, which is a complete joke.
d) I lost about $1000 alone on the 4 days in the Galapagos. -_-

During the 8 weeks, we managed to fit a lot in and see a lot of Peruvian and Ecuadorian culture. Staying with host families in Cuzco and in the jungle allowed us to see how people live in these places which was really interesting. Visiting the Galápagos Islands at the end of the 8 weeks was my favourite part of the trip. I also really enjoyed seeing Machu Picchu, the equator line and Quilotoa, to name just a few things.
The positives of Gap Force are: I made great friends and went with a group of fun, lovely people, everything was organised (Nick and Hanna were amazing!) so it was a great introduction to travelling (I'd now feel confident to do it all on my own), you have a huge amount of freedom if you want it, you get to visit/stay in places you wouldn't get to as easily on your own and the length of each 'stage' was the right length and the changes in town and type of activity kept the travelling interesting.