By mid 2012, my friend and me decided to accomplish one of our shared dreams. She was dying over going to Galapagos, and I desperately wanted to do the Inca Trail. It was a pleasant surprise to find SA Luxury Expeditions, given that they sell both destinations and generally seemed – at that time – quite capable of providing all arrangement for this trip.
We are both nearly 40 year old, and hence comfortability was a must so we didn’t hesitate to pay a bit extra for a premium, luxury trip. Well, the price was “premium” but the trip wasn’t luxury at all.

The Galapagos cruise was tourist class, or tourist upgraded at the most, but not luxury by any means. We actually learnt most of passengers on board had paid about thirty percent less than we did for the same trip! To make thing even worse, AC broke in our cabin during the second half of our trip.

In Ecuador, we did not have much trouble, but in Peru the correlation of problems persisted. There was an almost identical situation at the Inca Trail: it wasn’t a luxury service and the rest of the group had paid a lot less. Our tent was small, and food was poor. Besides, our guide wasn’t fluent in English and visibly didn’t feel comfortable answering our questions and requests.

Quite honestly, I have visited four different continents and have been everything from a backpacker to a luxury, private jet passenger. I traveled at least twice a year to other countries. While I normally don’t use a travel agency, when I do so I tend to research about it before booking with them. Apparently, everything was OK with SA Luxury Expeditions up until the trip actually started.

We had booked an additional day at Machu Picchu so we could spend a whole day at the ruins, and we were very specific about this before putting down our deposit, but the guide toured us only for about two hours and adamantly refrained to climb to Huayna Picchu (this is the bigger peak next to Machu Picchu).

If you go anywhere in South America, don’t do it with SA Luxury Expeditions.