Overview Review of the Trip

This was a wonderful trip for us to take care of 2 attraction spots on our buck list.  We had wonderful time, but we will not quite happy with Friendly Planet’s trip pre-planning effort for the following:

1. They have over blown about the requirement of travel emergency insurance required by Educator.
2. They have over blown about the requirement of avoiding single-use plastic materials posted by Galapagos.
3. Their flight itinerary from Quito back to US was terrible.
4. They have wrong information on their trip final document about the elevation of Ollantaytambo (They mentioned that it is 3,000 feet above sea level, actually it is 9,160 feet) 
5. Their tour guide Jamie was an experienced guide, however he failed to remind us about the quality of water in Cusco.  Several of us did have stomach issue after consuming the water in Cusco.  Even we boiled the water, we still can not change the minerals in the water which causes problem to our stomach. From time to time, he just forgot to mention about the weather conditions (particular windy condition) to us, we have to spot what he worn to determine if we need to bring additional jackets.
6. Out Galapagos guide Eddie is not the best guide on Santa Cruz II.  From time to time, he just walked away to next attractions without considering that we did not catch up with him.  We have to remind him that there are 10 people in his group and we need his explanation when we all get to a particular spot.  
7. We booked the Hyayna Picchu optional tour in January 2018.  We believed that Friendly Planet did not request tour tickets on our behalf and waited till May 2018.  This was just unacceptable.

With all these issues we had with this trip to South America, some of us had an conclusion of "Been there, done that, got sick of it, and never again".  However, after we settled down a little bit, we still think this was a wonderful trip.