Tour Explanation

Rio de Janiero

The tours that I run are done on a giant yellow truck that kind of looks like a big yellow toaster. On the truck there are 34 seats and lockers that hold all of their bags, big crates for food, tents, ovens and everything else needed for camping with that many people. My company is called Budget Expeditions, its part of a larger South American tour company called Tucan travel. Budget focuses on people 18 to 35 years old and are looking for a very budget conscious trip.

This trip starts in Rio de Janeiro with 14 people goes across Brazil down through Argentina all the way to Tierra del Fuego, back up through Patagonia to Santiago. In Santiago 6 people will get off and 23 will join making a group of 31. Then will continue up into Northern Chile cross back over into Northern Argentina and then up through Western Bolivia into Peru. From there we’ll go all the way up through Peru into Ecuador and the tour ends in Quito.

The tour is 4 months long and the highlights of the trip are the Brazilian wetlands of the Pantanal, Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, Torres del Paine National Park, the Bolivian Salt Flats, Cuzco and Machu Pichu, the sand dunes on the west coast of Peru and El Oriente the Ecuadorian Amazon.

We camp 70% of the time and the rest of the time stay in hotels, hostels and home stays. When we are camping the passengers are responsible for shopping and cooking their food, keeping the truck clean and organized and maintaining their tents.

My job is tour organize all the excursions and hotels, make sure the shopping and duties get done, keep all the accounts, give out all info about cities, countries and tours and make sure all the pax are happy healthy and terrific. I spend a lot of time in hospitals and photocopy places.

I work with one other person, my driver Steve. He’s from Australia and his responsibilities are driving, keeping the truck in working order and occasionally cook a kick ass barbeque.

This is our second 4 month trip in a row. Total time off between tours – about 2 and a half hours.