16.12.09 - Journey Latin America Celebrates 30 Years of Pioneering Travel to Latin America
When Chris and Brian led their first group tour, Latin America was a wilder place, hard to get around, and tourist infrastructure was practically non-existent. In celebration of those early days and in the spirit of those unpredictable times, the two tours have been designed to go off the beaten track.
Chris will be taking his group from Venezuela across the three Guyanas - Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, travelling by canoe, truck as well as conventional road vehicles through virgin jungle, ending up in the Brazilian Amazon.
Highlights include:
- Canoe to the foot of the Angel Falls.
- Journey across the Venezuela’s Lost World (Gran Sabana) passing giant tabletop tepuys.
- Bird watching and jaguar spotting in the Guyana forest.
- Experience community life in a remote Guyanese village.
- Visit the Europeen space centre in Kourou, French Guiana.
- Overnight à la Papillon on notorious former prison islands, les Îles du Salut.
The 18-night tour called Trail-blazing through the Guyanas, departs the UK on 18 September 2010 and prices starts from £2,998. This price includes international flights from London, domestic flights, accommodation, land transfers, guided excursions, full-board in the jungle and breakfast daily.
Brian, a Welshman, crosses from Argentine Welsh Patagonia through a gap in the Andes wall into Chile’s sparsely-inhabited 11th region - The first road through this region, the Carretera Austral, was opened in the 1980s.
Highlights include:
- Experience the Welsh culture in Argentina.
- Visit the Punta Tombo penguin colony.
- Travel on board the ‘Old Patagonian Express’ steam train.
- Journey down the Carretera Austral.
- Navigate through the fjords and islets to the island of Chiloé.
The 16-night tour called Trail-blazing across Patagonia departs the UK on 27 October 2010 and prices start from £2,998. This price includes international flights from London, domestic flights, accommodation, land transfers, guided excursions and breakfast daily.
Founding director Chris Parrot comments, 'Brian set up Journey Latin America in 1980, and I joined him shortly after. That two-man, two-telephone, one-desk operation has grown over the years to what Journey Latin America is today: a turnover of £25 million, 75 staff and some 20 tour leaders on the ground: a long-established and dedicated team who share the same ethos - of being the most knowledgeable people on earth about travel in and to Latin America, and passionate about it too. We couldn’t have done it without them'.
In celebration of Journey Latin America’s 30th birthday next year, the specialist tour operator will be putting on two unique group tours. The tour operator’s founding directors, Chris Parrott and Brian Williams (who led the company’s first ever group tours back in the early ‘80s) are leading two one-off departures, visiting a couple of relatively unvisited wilderness regions, Patagonia and the Guyanas. No other UK tour operator currently offers these routes and no other tour leader can claim to have such experience, laden with anecdotes and insights of Latin America.