This company had such great reviews that I was confident when I booked a trip with my son's school through them, and based on the limited information we received upfront we decided to make it a family trip. I should have known from the start they were unorganized because when it came to payment we were misled. We were told that we would receive a 10% discount for any else in our family who enrolled after my son. Well our bill came in with only one 10% discounts when there should have been 3 (myself, husband, and other son). This would have equated to a bit over $200 per person, so over $600. Back and forth we went with them and they even admitted the language was unclear and that's why our representative had told us that but at the end of the day they wouldn't honor it. We had already paid a deposit and just decided that fighting over the $400 difference wasn't worth it because my son really wanted to go on the trip and we went ahead an paid for the trip in full after I got in writing that given our family size we would have two rooms (with separate beds for our sons) at all times.
We kept waiting for a full itinerary to be posted and when it finally was (about a month prior to departure) we looked it over and felt like many of the aspects of the trip were not as had been described so I contacted them to cancel and was told we couldn't. We would have had to cancel three months before the trip to get our money back yet at that time there was very minimal information provided.
So we went, determined to make the best of it. Our group was 75+ people. They had 3 buses waiting for us at the airport but the buses were too small for the 3 groups they divided us into. We were crammed on with several people having to sit in jump seats. Sadly, whoever planned that thing must have been unprepared. We arrived to all of our rooms being cancelled. Apparently the hotel had double booked (and they hadn't confirmed reservations or they would have known in advance of our arrival) so they were scrambling to find hotels at the very last minute that could take us. As you can imagine, only the most disgusting places that no one wants to stay had openings. Not only that, my oldest son got placed into a room with three other boys where two had to share a bed. The accommodations were frightening. Then I heard from a friend that got placed in a different hotel that they had 17 people sharing 4 rooms with only 1 bathroom for all of them. She was miserable to.
Then it seems that everything they planned was many hours ride away (like 4-5) and yet they thought nothing of cramming us back on those same small buses where several unlucky folks ended up on jump seats for those ridiculously long rides. I literally could write novel about how awful nearly every part of this trip was, simply because it seemed like they were doing each thing on the fly and we were paying the price for their poor planning. People were injured, people were crying. people were starved by their host families, people were begging to get off the bus, people were begging for bathroom breaks, people were collapsing and having to be ATV'd out of treacherous conditions. I mean, in all honestly it was a trip from hell. There were only 2 positives on this trip. First, we got lucky with our host families; they were gracious and fed us. Sure the accommodations were rough but we expected that and were just happy to be immersed in their lives and culture so there are no complaints there. But other people didn't have it so lucky and had to deal with un-vetted families who were only in it for the $300 they get paid to house tourist. The other highlight was rating the Pacuare River. However, the 4 hour bus ride there and the 5 hour ride back because of an accident, made the great experience turn into sheer torture after being crammed into an even smaller bus with no air and windows that couldn't be opened. Plus they had us back at the disgusting hotel, where I kid you not there were boogers in the towels they gave me, and dirt in the bed because they don't change the sheets between guest.
For the $9,000 we paid for our family of 4 to go on the trip to Costa Rica we should have a luxury vacation during the time we weren't doing service in the remote village, but instead we were housed in poor conditions in hotels not fit for animals, crammed into overly small buses, taken on treacherous hikes with no extra water, taken on adventures that were overly far from where they housed us when good hotels were nearby, and then because of traffic our "fun" times were cut in half because they hadn't planned for that.
There were so many disgruntled people on our school trip that the school will no longer be using them for future travel. We calculated the value we got versus what we received and discovered we received less than $4,000 value for the $9,000 we paid. read more
