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ABOUT US

About Us: Detour, The Adventure Travel Marketplace

Detour is an adventure travel marketplace---a place where travelers can find and purchase trips from top quality local travel providers around the world. Detour doesn't operate any of the trips, tours, or lodges listed on www.detourdestinations.com; these trips are all operated and managed by the best local providers in each country.   You can find more details about the provider of each trip by clicking on the Provider's name under the name of the trip.   You can also find more information about the providers by visiting our Travel Providers page and clicking on any provider's name: Travel Providers .

We know adventure travel, and we get the importance of sustainability, based on our decades of involvement on the ground in the international adventure tourism industry. This experience allows us to select the best local tour operators in each destination, as we understand what it takes to run great trips, and we've seen the damage of improper tourism, as well as the benefits of sustainable travel.

Not just any local travel provider can sell trips on our site; we only allow the best to sell through the marketplace The travel providers on our site are all professional, reliable companies that are respected leaders in the travel industry in their own country. We have selected them because we have first-hand knowledge of their professionalism, quality, and social and environmental responsibility, and because they have been highly recommended by other travel professionals we know and trust. Detour screens providers so as to only allow the best local companies to sell to you. Someone from Detour's staff has met with representatives of each travel provider on our site, and we have some first hand knowledge of each company.

Why Choose Detour?

  • Detour's Adventure Travel Marketplace sells trips from the best tour operators in Latin America at their local prices.
  • We use our decades of experience in international trip operations to screen operators, so you travel with the best!
  • Our local travel providers set the prices, and we charge the same price you would pay if you booked directly with them in country.
  • When you travel with a local tour operator you make sure your vacation dollars end up in the destination where you travel, helping to protect the environment and improve the lives of local people.

Detour makes it easy for you to find the right trip from a highly professional local tour operator:

  • Detour pre-screens all of the tour operators selling trips on our site, so you don't have to worry about getting a high-quality trip from a professional, top-quality tour operator.
  • We sell competing trips from competing tour operators so that you have choices in what you do and when you go, as well as in styles of trips.
  • You can choose complete tour packages, or short a la carte segments that you can combine together to create your own perfect custom trip.
  • Because Detour doesn't operate any of the trips, we don't have an agenda to promote any particular trip--we only want you to get the trip you want!
  • Click Here to read about Local Tour Operators You Can Trust!
  • Don't take our word for it--read unbiased trip and tour operator reviews from previous travelers.

Go Global, Buy Local:

  • By traveling with a local tour operator you'll get an insider's view of the culture and landscapes of the Galapagos Islands, Machu Picchu, the Inca Trail, Patagonia, the Amazon Rainforest, Costa Rica, Belize, and Tanzania.
  • You pay less than if you were traveling with a foreign-based tour operator
  • More of your money makes it into the destination where you travel, where it improves the lives of local people and helps protect local ecosystems.

Make sure your vacation improves the environment and the lives of local people in your travel destination:

  • Detour promotes sustainable tourism, and has signed a partnership agreement with the Rainforest Alliance to promote local companies who are certified as green or sustainable tour operators and hotels.  
  • We also offset our carbon footprint through carbonfund.org, and make it easy for you to offset the carbon footprint of your trip.
  • Click here to read more about Detour and Sustainable Tourism

Our Commitment to Sustainable Tourism

(For more on Sustainable Travel click here: Sustainable Travel)

Detour is committed to Sustainable Tourism, which might be defined as a level of tourism activity that can be maintained over the long term because it results in a net benefit for the social, economic, natural and cultural environments of the area in which it takes place.   Our business model, of selling trips from local companies, is a big component of this commitment.   By traveling with local companies your tourism dollars go directly into the local economy, guaranteeing that local people benefit from the intrusion of tourism.   We only work with companies that reinvest in the local communities where they run trips, and that follow strong environmental practices.  

Traveling with a local company also allows you, the traveler, to better experience the local culture by actually interacting with local people, not just guides from your own country.   Locals best know the hidden gems in their country, and can often share experiences with you that a foreign guide or company could not.

Our Story

Detour was founded in response to both travelers and local travel providers, because both groups continually expressed to us the desire to find the other.   Travelers have for years been contacting us to help them find good quality local travel providers so they could have a more local experience and save money over traveling with US and European based companies.   Quality local travel providers have expressed how difficult it is for them to attract foreign travelers, and to express the differences between themselves and low-quality, low cost competitors.   Detour's adventure travel marketplace is based on meeting the needs of both groups by helping travelers find top-quality local providers.   We also understand that it is very time consuming and difficult to find the right trip and strive to simplify that process so that travelers can get the trip they want at the price they want.

Our Location

Detour's main office is on the beautiful walking mall on Last Chance Gulch, Helena, Montana, USA. From our office we have access to over 60 miles of trails where we can hike, mountain bike, and run in the Montana mountains!

Contact Us:

Office Address:101 N. Last Chance Gulch, Suite B, Helena, MT 59601, USA.
Mailing Address: PO Box 1027, Helena, MT, 59624, USA
Toll Free Phone: 866.386.4168
International Phone: 720.246.8884
Montana Phone: 406.449.2255
Fax: 720.221.3264
info@detourdestinations.com

Our Staff

Greg Findley, CEO



"It was a privilege to raft and explore with Greg Findley, one of the great river pioneers of our time. Be it charging crocs, unrun rapids, landmines, tropical diseases, or the challenge of dutch oven baking, Greg is consistently cool and competent, a renaissance river guide, ever knowledgeable, ever-wise, always curious, and at home in any eddy or current or wilderness in the world...there is no better traveling companion!"
-- Richard Bangs, Adventure Travel Pioneer and Author

Greg has over 20 years of experience in the adventure travel industry, having worked as a guide, a local operations manager, a sales/marketing manager, and a company owner in the US, Africa, South America, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Southwest Asia.   He is passionate about travel, which he defines as truly experiencing a place's people and natural history.   Greg is also passionate about connecting travelers with local travel providers (many of whom are his good friends), as he wants to help quality local companies stand out from the lower quality companies.

He started his career by taking a Semester in the Rockies course from the National Outdoor Leadership School in 1981, where he began to learn skills of safely leading and educating groups on wilderness trips. Here he also began to develop an ethic of preserving the environment everywhere he traveled. Immediately after the course he got his first adventure travel job as he worked at a summer camp for disadvantaged youth in Minnesota. Here Greg took campers on canoeing and backpacking trips, giving many of them their first wilderness and camping experiences. Greg then became a Nordic ski instructor at Jackson Hole Ski Resort, where he also guided backcountry ski tours.

In 1985 Greg was involved in a traumatic climbing accident in the Teton Mountains of Wyoming. Two of Greg's friends died of hypothermia in a horrible early season winter storm, and Greg suffered severe frostbite and hypothermia while nearly dying himself. This event has had an enormous affect on Greg's life and has made him stress the importance of safety on wilderness adventures.

While recovering from severe frostbite to his feet, Greg desperately sought to find a way to enjoy nature and wilderness travel. An old friend suggested he take a course to become a rafting guide on the Snake River near Jackson, Wyoming. Greg took the course and discovered that he loved traveling on rivers, and that raft guiding could take him around the world to guide American clients on international rivers, as most international locales did not have local river guides at the time. Greg's family had a long history of living and working internationally (his mother was born in China and Greg lived in the Philippines from the ages of 2-5), and knew instantly that this was the path he must follow. After spending several years guiding Class IV and V rivers in California, Greg gained experience on multi-day expeditions by guiding the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho. From there he was hired by Sobek Expeditions to guide the Zambezi River in Zambia in 1991. Following his first season in Zambia Greg was offered the position of Operations Manager for Sobek Zambia, which he accepted as his first real management experience and experience doing business in another culture.

Next Greg guided rafting and trekking trips for Mountain Travel * Sobek in Chile (on the Bio Bio and Futaleufu Rivers), and in Zimbabwe, Costa Rica, Turkey, and Peru. He also managed MTS's Patagonia trekking operation for several years. Over this time Greg got to know many outstanding local guides and outfitters, and began to understand how difficult it is for them to attract customers from overseas.

After leaving MTS, Greg was co-founder and President of Mukuni, Wilderness Whitewater Expeditions, a boutique travel company that ran international river expeditions. In this capacity Greg set up and guided exploratory and unique rafting expeditions in Peru, Bolivia, and the Philippines. Greg also served as a consultant to the Philippines Dept of Tourism for whom he designed and led the official government sponsored whitewater guides training course.

Greg found himself slowly morphing from guide to administrator and decided to pursue this transition by getting an MBA from the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. Since then and before founding Detour, Greg has served as a business consultant to the National Park Service, and for PACT, the Protected Areas Conservation Trust of Belize.

You can read about Greg's first descent river trips in the Philippines in Outside Magazine's Article, "Down and Out in the Bundoks": Greg Findley in Outside Magazine

Greg is also featured on a Bolivia rafting/trekking expedition he led in the book "The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys" By Jon E. Lewis.

Greg was one of the boatmen on the first descent of Ethiopia's Tekeze River, which was documented by the Turner Network: The Last Wild River Ride

 

Kate French, Latin America Travel Specialist



Kate is a traveler whenever she gets the chance. Her wanderings have taken her through Europe, Mexico, much of the US and South America. Kate's latest excursions were to mainland Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, and across Kansas.

After graduating from the University of Colorado, Kate backpacked extensively in South America through 2004 and 2005 . Certified as a TEFL teacher, Kate taught English both in a school and privately in Arequipa, Peru. Later, she volunteered at an animal refuge, Inti Wara Yassi in Villa Tunari, Bolivia. She has also spent time exploring the beaches of Brazil and the mountains of Argentina.

She also has a background in environmental and social justice causes. Most recently, she worked for local environmental and anti-violence campaigns in her hometown of Denver, CO. As an previous community organizer for corporate accountability campaigns, she found much in common with Detour's mission. Moreover, she is glad to be part of a company that focuses on the human and environmental costs of tourism without neglecting the traveler's experience.

Whenever she gets the chance, Kate enjoys running, backpacking, snowboarding, and yoga. While away from her landlocked state, she finds time to go sea kayaking and snorkeling.

 

Allie Savage, Traveler Support



Allie spends life awaiting her next adventure. Fortunately, she found Montana and doesn’t need to wait long for something to pop up. Whether it’s floating down the North Fork River in Glacier National Park or strapping on cross county skies and heading into the back country, Allie uses most of her free time enjoying the outdoors. 

Having grown up in the outskirts of Chicago, Allie’s family spent most weekends camping, fishing, or mini-vaning the Midwest for soccer games. And every summer – to this day – they venture into the north woods of Wisconsin away from TV, cell phone service, and the rush of city life. Allie earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carthage College in Kenosha, WI where she toured much of the country kickin’ some serious booty for the women’s soccer team.

However, it wasn’t until a road trip west that she tasted her first mountain high and decided to move out to Montana. She served a year as an Americorps VISTA in a Helena high school, mentoring youth and administering community-wide awareness campaigns. She worked the 2009 Montana legislative session for the Montana Environmental Information Center (MEIC) – one of the most influential and active environmental organizations in the state. And to fill the time in between, she got to eat all the organic food she wanted working at the local health food store – where she still spends some time in order to maintain her crystallized ginger chew habit.

Teb Leung, IT Specialist

Mia Antonio, Programmer

Amory Genter, Travel Specialist

Hayley Mortimer, Operations

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TESTIMONIALS

I would recommend this trip to a friend in a second. The trip to the Galapagos was Outstanding. The Letty was wonderful; the naturalists were the greatest; the food was superb; the crew excellent; (I\'m running out of adjectives) I would recommend the whole thing and your agency also. You really provided excellent service and information. I felt I could email or call you with any questions and I knew you would answer quickly and I felt honestly. For just taking a chance finding you on the internet, I was very fortunate.

-- Joyce P, Galapagos Islands on the Eric, Letty, Flamingo I

The Inca trail trek can only be described as magical. I tried my best to be cynical, but it didn’t work. This trip was pure magic and absolutely perfect. The logistics of the trip were impeccable. The ground transportation was on time and they made sure I was able to obtain my boarding pass and pay the airport tax at each leg of the trip. Out on the hike, my guide Oswaldo was fabulous. The food on the trail was amazing. The chef created simple and fresh meals that were bursting with local flavor.

-- Terry B, Inca Trail 5-day with Andean Adventures

Just returned from Costa Rica last night ... trip was a GREAT SUCCESS! We all thank you VERY MUCH for arranging the trip.

-- Bob Fenchel, Custom Costa Rica with Camino Travel

We’ve been home just over a week now and I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you just how fantastically well everything went! Ok, so we did end up paying the full whack (which I’ve decided just not to think about!). However, we had a fantastic guide and everything ran really smoothly and we had a fantastic time. From being collected from the hotel (Vieja Cuba which was lovely) to being looked after once we got to the Galapagos it was all just perfect, so thank you very much for being an important part of our fabulous trip. Cheers Greg !

-- Marayka K., Galapagos Multisport 7-Day Adventure

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