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Adventure Tours |
 Nature and Culture Trips Ecuador is a relatively small country by South American standards but an immensely rich one in natural diversity and cultural heritage. The country is per square meter the most biological diverse (for more, click to our information.biodiversity section of the web) in the world, e.g. 1600 birds make Ecuador their home, almost double of birds found in all Europe or the North American continent. The Andean highlands, tropical cloud- and rainforests, Pacific coast and the unique Galapagos islands, all with their distinct fauna and flora await you here. If you are more interested in people and their history and culture (for a virtual sightseeing tour of attractions, click to information.exhibitions.gallery), Ecuador offers you as well many interesting sites. In museums throughout the country you may admire the cultures of old Indian civilizations, famous for their pottery and metalworks. Also a few remains of the Inca presence are still to be seen here. And with the arrival of the Spaniards, another rich but foreign culture imposed their ideas and mixed with the existing one. Old colonial towns with their squares and churches bear witness to that event. Many visitors are amazed at the multitude of diverse attractions, the country has to offer in that small space. The travel programs which follow in the individual sections tries to integrate as many diverse sites as possible for everyone's personal tastes. But if you have very particular interests and cannot find them in our tours, contact us anyway and we try to accommodate you. Our nature & culture travel program include day trips to natural sites, like ecological reserves in the Andes and cloudforest regions, three interesting Indian markets and cultural tourist attractions close to Quito. For extended trips, which lead to all regions of the country, look up our complete 1 to 3-week travel packages. For those of you, especially interested in the fauna and flora of Ecuador, we offer you unique wildlife tours to get to know plants and observe animals, like birds, mammals or reptiles in their natural habitat, be it in the Andes mountains, the sub-tropical cloud forest and the tropical coastal and Amazon rainforest regions of the country. Apart from our own wildlife tours to the Amazon, we sell you also programs of jungle lodges, which operate in the Amazon rainforest and offer an easier way of experiencing this major region. For the Galapagos islands, we created its own major section as for many they are the main reason for coming to Ecuador. Those volcanic islands are part of natural history and have a unique fauna and flora, only seen there and nowhere else. We sell you nature and diving cruises of various cruise companies, operating in the islands. We have over 50 boats and ships in our catalogue and in the individual boat pages, you find their picture, itinerary and prices. All the land trips are planned, organized and run by me, Erich Lehenbauer, multilingual Austrian-Canadian author of this Web. As I am guiding the tours myself, you are always assured that you deal with the same person from beginning to end and not like with other outfits, where you deal with different people at different stages and then finally having a tour guide you never met before. The tour vehicles used on the trips are our own and include a new Mercedes Benz Sprinter bus for 16 passengers, a 4X4 Hyundai Gallopper II and for daytrips, an open and roofless Toyota Landcruiser Jeep. Furthermore, being a foreigner myself and having worked since 1995 in the travel business, I think to know what visitors expect and try accordingly to provide them with a pleasant travel experience. Another important distinction, I like to mention is my flexibility in planning and individualizing your trips or once on the road to make changes anytime necessary due to unforeseen factors, like weather, illness or your personal wishes. For your convenience and certainly mine, our travel office is located in our Bed & Breakfast Parque Italia which makes everything so much easier if you decide to stay at our small hostel but that is not really an obligation on your part as I gladly pick you up at any hotel establishment in Quito or elsewhere. As we have our own hotel, our own tour vehicles, guiding by myself and can sell you Galapagos cruises and other tours, we can prepare you complete packages, where all you have to do, is arrive at the airport in Quito and we take then care of you till your departure. Those programs we call All in One and are put together for groups of 10 or more people. We can put together your own land program and you have options for chartering boats in the Galapagos for a truly unique experience. Note: For people, who travel alone or in pairs and like to join a trip to save money or just for company, we have planned tours in our information.events section or on the individual tour pages. 
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