The things people ask before they write.

Every expedition page carries the window we would run it in, not the window it can technically be sold in. Where one place produces two genuinely different trips across the year, we split them rather than average them into a vague best time.

Torres del Paine in November is a different mountain from Torres del Paine in February. High water on the Napo puts you in a canoe where low water puts you on a trail. If your dates land on the wrong side of that, the first reply says so and offers the month that works.

Six to twelve months for anything with a permit or a bed cap behind it. Inca Trail dates in June to August go roughly six months out, Patagonia refugios can be eight, and Galápagos berths on the boats worth being on move earlier still.

Shorter is often fine outside those windows. We have built good trips in eight weeks. We have also had to tell people in March that their July is already gone, and we would rather say it early.

It is planned for rather than apologised for. Remote and technical routes carry contingency days and a named alternative objective, and the guide in the field makes that call. It is not overruled from an office.

What we will not do is manufacture a summit or push a crossing to protect an itinerary. If a pass is loaded, a river is up, or a boat cannot safely run, the day changes.

No, and no one honestly can. We will tell you where the odds are genuinely strong, which is not the same claim. Jaguar on the Three Brothers in the dry season is a good bet. Anything on any given morning is not.

Every page carries a fitness bar written to be taken literally, not to flatter you. Easy means full days out with no altitude problem. Moderate means consecutive days on foot with real ascent. Challenging means long days, thin air, and load, with weather that decides the pace.

Read the elevation line beside it. A moderate day at 4,600 m is harder than a challenging day at sea level, and altitude is the thing people underestimate most.

The guide can shorten a day, reroute it, or turn you around, and that is a normal part of running these routes rather than a failure. Tell us honestly at brief stage and we will build in the margin.

What we cannot do is refund a day you chose not to walk, and we will not put a party at risk to keep one person on schedule.

Not a number, but there is a threshold. Several routes have hard requirements — a dive certification card, a demonstrated ability to move on a rope, a medical for high-altitude work — and those apply whatever your age.

We run family journeys regularly and we run trips for people in their seventies. What decides it is the specific day, not the birth year, and we would rather redesign a route around your party than sell you one it will break.

For trekking, no, but you need the acclimatisation days and you need to actually take them. We build the profile so the schedule is not the thing that hurts you.

For glaciated summit work — Huayna Potosí, Cotopaxi, the technical Cordillera days — yes. Those run at one-to-one or one-to-two guide ratios and we will ask what you have done before.

A small-group departure runs on our calendar, capped at eight to ten depending on the terrain and on what the permit allows. It sits at the low end of the band and carries no single supplement.

A private departure runs on your dates at your pace, over the same ground. It costs more because the guide, cook team, and vehicle turn up for two the same way they turn up for eight. At four or more the gap narrows a lot.

That is most of what we do. The sixty published expeditions are a catalog, not the inventory. Send dates, the people coming, and the kind of ground you want, and we design against that rather than selling you the nearest published thing.

We will lift days from the catalog where they genuinely work. We will not staple three trips together and call it a design.

Often, and the country pages say which pairings actually work. What makes a combination good is a shared season and a sane connection, not a shared border. Bolivia's altiplano into northwest Argentina is a real trip; Patagonia into the Caribbean in the same fortnight is two holidays and a lot of airports.

Yes, with the economics stated up front. Bands are per person sharing, so a solo private departure carries the room supplement plus the whole fixed cost and lands above the published ceiling. Joining a small-group departure removes the supplement entirely.

On trekking circuits, camp and refuge nights carry no supplement at all. The mountain does not have a single room to sell.

Because party size, season, and whether you sleep in a lodge or a camp move the real figure by thousands, and a single headline number would be a guess dressed as a fact.

Every bookable page carries the range and a paragraph explaining what sits inside it. The quote you receive is a number, not a range.

There is no checkout on this site and nothing is held before you have a written agreement. A deposit confirms a departure and the balance falls due before travel — typically around a third at confirmation with the balance roughly two months out, though the binding schedule is the one in your agreement, because permit deadlines move it.

Where a park or a vessel demands full payment months ahead, we say so rather than absorb it silently.

Outside the balance window we refund the deposit less a planning fee and any park, permit, or charter cost already committed and not recoverable. Inside that window the balance is at risk unless the space resells. The exact figures live in your agreement.

This is the clause travel insurance is actually for, and on high or remote routes insurance is mandatory. It has to name the activity and the altitude; a policy that excludes trekking above 4,000 m is not cover.

Where a park closes, a permit falls through, community consent is withdrawn, or an alert makes a route unsafe, you are refunded for everything not already committed on your behalf, and we will tell you precisely what that is.

We would rather rewrite a day, or return your money, than run something we would not put our own people on.

International flights, most domestic flights unless bundled, travel insurance, personal technical clothing, visas, vaccinations, and tips. Any wildlife sighting, summit, or weather outcome.

Third-party costs that move — park fees, public environmental taxes, domestic airfares — are passed through at the rate in force and shown as separate lines rather than absorbed quietly.

Eight expeditions are inquire-only. Access on each depends on something outside our control: a capped permit, a compliance regime, a current security picture, or community consent that can be withdrawn.

Publishing a bookable price would imply we can sell you something we may not be able to deliver. On two of them we suppress the price range entirely and quote only after clearance.

It depends on the route. Compliance checks and licence category for the Cuba programmes. Current permit status and capacity for Galápagos and Manu. Community consent and a live security read for the Darién and Mosquitia corridors. Federal caps and daily quota for Fernando de Noronha.

We do this before anything is designed, and sometimes the answer is no. We would rather lose the booking than sell you a permission that does not exist.

No. The páramo and nevados of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta are closed to tourism by the park authority and by the four indigenous nations who hold the range. Manu's Intangible Zone is closed permanently. Arenal's crater has no legal summit route.

Operators still sell all three. We work inside closures rather than around them, and where a quota is gone, the date is gone.

Sofía reads it and checks the season, permit windows, and current access against your actual dates. You get a reply within one business day and the first thing in it is feasibility, including when the month is wrong or the ground is closed.

If it works, we design against the constraints and price it with the inclusions written out. Nothing is held and no deposit is taken until you have that in writing.

A person. Every brief is read and answered by a planner who has either been on that ground or works directly with the people who run it. There is no automated booking here and no chatbot in front of the door.

The people who work that ground: certified mountain guides where the terrain is technical, licensed park guides where the park assigns them, naturalists and archaeologists where the day is about what you are looking at, and boat captains who have run that water for decades.

We do not fly a generalist in to front a route they have never walked.

Yes, and it is common. Your advisor keeps the relationship; we design and run the ground. Ask them to write to Sofía or start from the advisors page. We settle the commercial arrangement between us rather than through you.

Regularly. To routes that are closed, to dates that will not work, to fitness that does not match the day, and to briefs where the honest answer is that someone else is better placed.

It is the least commercial thing we do and the reason people come back.