The cheapest Inca Trail Hike with GAP is $950. That trek includes 3 extra nights in Cusco plus a Sacred Valley Tour. A cheap hotel room (per person, 2 sharing) in Cusco is about $20. ($60 total), the Sacred Valley Tour starts at $40 for a group tour plus the entrance fees (another $20). GAP also provides porters for carrying your personal stuff (extra clothes, sleeping bag, etc.) If you share a porter with another person it’s worth about $25. So, the Inca Trail Hike would cost about $830. Booking it on your own would be about $500. Although the cost is significantly less, its not a savings of 75%! You also have to make sure that you are booked through a licensed tour operator as you can’t do the trail without one. Local company or international, to be a responsible tourist, try to find a company that treats its employees well. I’ve never been with Contiki or Intrepid so can’t comment on them. However, the employees on my GAP tours all feel they are treated fairly. When travelling around Peru on our own, often when we told people we had done a 2 week trip with GAP, the comments we got were that they had a good reputation for treating their employees well and helping out the local economy (staying a local, not international, hotels, and using locals when possible).

I’ve done 4 trips with GAP and on some of them have had a few extra days on our own. With a group you get the luxury of someone else to look after all the details and a bunch of people to travel with. You also have someone who knows the culture and the language to help you out. Once familiar with the country, spending a few days on one’s own is a lot easier.

On the trek i met other Canadians who had booked with adventure companies and had paid thousands for the same experience. They had a guide (there was only one path!) and a sherpa to carry all their useless MEC gear (we walked the circuit in shorts/ t-shirts, and sport sandals).

This was almost 20 years ago and travelling has simply become more and more sanitized and easy with the advent of the internet. Is their any adventure left when every possible question one has can be answered by consulting your phone?

My sister and her husband have had 2 GAP trips–Peru/Machu Picchu and Turkey and loved their trips because everything’s arranged, if there’s a problem it’s solved for them (e.g. roads were going to be washed out & their leader got them on a bus early to get out of the area), the guides speak the local language and can tip them off to safety issues and who to talk to if they’re alone and there’s a problem. They’d both go back on each trip without GAP now that they’re comfortable with the places and understand the customs and risks. They also travel a lot without tours (all over Europe, Mexico, US and Canada).

We travel to French Polynesia (Tahiti and her islands) and the language barrier can, at times, be a problem. Resorts always have English-speaking people to ask questions, but we stay in pensions and people’s backyards and sometimes my French isn’t good enough to follow the details of, for instance, airline strikes (and finding an English-speaking person who knows what’s going on isn’t always easy). My Tahitian definitely isn’t good enough to understand the details (the news is given in both languages)! But French Polynesia’s a safe, friendly place that we’ve researched well so we’re comfortable travelling around the islands without guides.

We’ve only done one cruise (we really aren’t cruise-type of people) and we did arrange our own on-the-spot tours when we arrived at each port. You do save a lot, but make sure you get back to the ship on time!