Like other globetrotter destinations such as Africa and Europe, Goway’s roots in Latin America began in the 1970s. I had started Goway by specializing in selling fun camping tours for young adults in Europe as well as overland adventure journeys across Asia, Africa, and also South America.
It was in 1976 that Goway began to sell Bus Trek’s South America Journeys, which had been pioneered the year before by Graham Strachan in a minibus. His business partner was Ted Tziadkiewicz, whom we called Ted Alphabet and who operated a South American specialist travel company in Melbourne, Australia; that agency still operates today. By that point Graham and Bus Trek had bought a full-size coach bus in England and were modifying it for South American overlanding. Seats would be removed for space to carry luggage, camping equipment, and two tables which 34 passengers could share.
The bus was be shipped to Bogotá in Colombia to meet Graham and another driver. An 82-day itinerary from Bogotá would travel via the spine of the Andes Mountains to Santiago, Chile, over the mountains to Buenos Aires, and then up to Rio de Janeiro via Iguassu Falls. The first departure would leave Bogotá in November and arrive in Rio in time for its famous Carnival. The bus would then pick up new passengers and complete a reverse itinerary back to Colombia to again do another round trip. There would therefore be four trips a year. As it turned out, I was able to sell 14 passengers (including a Toronto TV news reporter) on the first departure, while Ted had sold 16. I had also sold 10 on the February departure after Carnival.
Ultimately, though, Graham called to say that they were terminating their whole operation as their set-up costs were significantly more than they had budgeted for. No one would lose money, but passengers wouldn’t get their trips and Goway wouldn’t make any money. Based on other information I got, I made the quick decision for Goway to purchase the British bus and to have Graham run our first two departures. That’s how Goway become a South American operator!
Another Glitch Turns into an Opportunity
Of course, it also turned out that our bus arrived six weeks late in Bogotá, so Graham had to operate the first three quarters of the trip to Buenos Aires by renting local buses. Fortunately, everyone had the time of their lives, including the TV reporter who ended up marrying one of the other passengers. We naturally lost a lot of money on that departure, but we were also now set up to operate in South America, and we had proof of concept.
After operating it for nearly four years, Goway replaced the British bus with a much safer reconfigured school bus, bought and modified in Ottawa, Canada, with a flat front and no protruding engine. At the time, it became only the second Canadian vehicle to be able to legally travel roads outside of North America. The registration also became an advantage over our British competitors, who used expedition trucks. When the Falklands War broke out in 1982, all of Goway’s British rivals were prohibited from travelling through Argentina, but we did.
An Ending & Then a New Start
During its first 10 years in Latin America, where we also established a Central America connector trip between Toronto and Panama, Goway experienced the Falklands conflict, political unrest in Central America, earthquakes, coups, dictatorships, and lots of breakdowns in out-of-the-way places. We also knew about El Niño long before the rest of the world. I wanted to discard our now-old vehicle and rent locally, but our operations department at the time was run by Steve Corbett, who preferred to maintain our own vehicles as he was a bus driver and diesel mechanic. Because we weren’t making enough money to offset the risks involved, however, we eventually opted to close our South America operation.
Our very last tour leader, Pip Tyler, then started his own company, called Toucan, which operated South American tours using my idea. Toucan went out of business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Graham Strachan also opened a specialist Latin American agency in Melbourne to compete with Ted Alphabet, while Lew Pulbrook, another Goway driver/leader, also ran another Latin America specialist agency in Australia until he passed away in the early 2020s.
Goway was absent from Central and South America until 2005, when we purchased a small “boutique” worldwide adventure specialist called Adventures Incorporated, run by Don Forster. For a number of years we tried to revive the original Goway Adventure spirit. Don’s big love was Latin America. Over the years, Adventures Incorporated faded away, but Goway’s Latin America division was developed in 2009 under Don’s leadership.
In 2011, we published our first Latin America brochure, offering over 100 independent and escorted travel ideas across 44 pages. As Latin America experts, we were now able to offer a full range of travel deals and promote the same top-quality service clients were getting in other long-haul destinations for Globetrotters. Sean Hebert is Goway’s Vice President for the Americas today, while Robert Miller has been the Commercial Manager for Central and South America for over five years now.
At time of writing, Goway's Latin American Destination Specialists offer nearly 200 unique itineraries on goway.com for 16 countries in Central and South America. Most are flexible and can be tailored to suit your personal interests.
Goway Gets an IATA License
Our vehicles in South America frequently needed many replacement parts, and it was a big hassle and expensive to ship them. Doing so also involved lots of paperwork and there was no guarantee of delivery in a timely manner. Once, for example, a brand-new engine went missing for a week when it was flown from Toronto to Bogotá via Miami.
The solution to this problem: If we got an IATA license to issue airline tickets, we would be eligible for AD75 discounts on fares. A Goway employee would be able to take the parts on a flight as checked luggage and fly to South America within days of getting requests for parts. And yes, that is how GowayAir, Goway’s flight selling and ticketing team, really originated.
One of the most fun experiences I enjoyed when we operated in South America was when I delivered a crank shaft in a big wooden box to La Paz in Bolivia. In those days, I could have been carrying guns in that box to banditos. To convince the Bolivian customs agents that my checked luggage was legitimate, I found myself speaking Australian/Spanish, pointing out pictures of our "autobus" in our Goway brochure and showing my business card that said I was "el Presidente." They let me in with no fee or bribe.
On the Inca Trail
Before Goway got fully back into offering travel experiences all over South America, I contacted my South America expert mate Ted Alphabet in Australia to organize an Inca Trail experience for me, my Australian mate Ian, and my Canadian mate Robin. Ted’s reply was: "Great idea, can me and my mate Richard come, too?" Most of us arrived in Lima at different times during the night—Robin and I from Canada, Ian from Europe, and Ted and his mate on different flights from Australia. We met in the restaurant bar in our hotel, where we drank Pisco Sours till we realized the new people in the room were breakfast guests.
The Inca Trail is the most famous trek in South America but was mostly inaccessible to tourists when Goway ran buses through South America. That is because the Shining Path, a Maoist rebel group and designated terrorist organization, was active in Peru in the 1980s and 90s. Hiking the Inca Trail those days was just too dangerous.
Although I had trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro and through Nepal, which were awesome, the four days we spent on the Inca Trail, visiting extraordinary ruins on the original Inca highway, were among the most spectacular I’ve ever experienced. Porters carried our main bags and tents and handled all camp duties. A lot of the time it was wet and one night it was really muddy. But it was all forgotten when on a sunny morning we looked down on the incredible view of the ancient city we had come to see.
A very bad situation was averted at our last night's farewell dinner in Cusco, where Richard realized at the very last minute that the ingredients of the meal Robin was about to eat contained peanuts, which he was allergic to. Robin had an EpiPen on the trek, but hadn’t brought it to dinner. Fortunately, we didn’t ultimately need it.
A Time Warp Experience
The Falklands Islands are as far from the South Pole as London is from the North Pole. But when Claire, Adam, and I went there, it did feel like we were at the end of the world. This very small territory (population 3,400, most of it clustered in the capital, Stanley) was more British than the British. It has its own currency, red telephone booths, a double-decker bus, little houses with gardens, and a great deal of Land Rovers. We felt we were in a British country community from the 1950s. Many people on the islands had two jobs: their day jobs (such as farming) and a second job (such as working in immigration at the airport). They waved at us as we passed them on the street and we drank with them in their quaint pubs. Most visitors to the Falklands are day trippers from cruise ships but we went for a week. We flew the country's own airline (made up of small planes) to different islands, where we were home hosted.
But it is the wildlife, particularly the penguins, that are perhaps most memorable. They are just as friendly as the local people, as they have no fear of humans. When we walked among them, they would clear away, but when we stopped or sat they would start gathering around, seemingly asking "Who are you?" There are five breeds of penguins that live in the Falklands, totaling about 500,000 birds. They are the king, the gentoo, the (adorable) rockhopper, the macaroni, and the Magellanic, each in their own different colonies. We were told that most pictures one sees of penguins were photographed in the Falklands, where we also saw some of the 220 species of other birds, including albatrosses and king cormorants. As well, we walked among sea lion and elephant seal colonies. At one point, an elephant seal raised its head and frightened Claire, who twisted her ankle when she thought she had to escape.
As I enjoy war history, I was fascinated talking to locals and visiting the battlefields of the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina over who owns the Falklands (or Las Malvinas in Spanish). When we arrived at immigration, the local officer noticed from Claire's passport that she was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), telling us they had a lot of miners from Zimbabwe in the Falklands. Later at the pub, the same man explained to us that the “miners” were professionals who actually cleared fields where the Argentine army had left active landmines. To prove they had done a proper job, the “miners” would play a soccer game on the cleared field!
Cruising the End of the World
I have a preference for small-ship expedition cruises and Goway’s Latin American experts offer several. Claire and I were attracted to the End of the World Cruise through Cape Horn, over the biggest ship graveyard in the world. We travelled for five days between Punta Arenas, Chile and Ushuaia, Argentina, the world’s southernmost city. We learned about whaler and clipper ships, and the legends of maritime explorers such as Francis Drake, Ferdinand Magellan, and Charles Darwin. It was Magellan who found a protected waterway through the Cape and also observed the many fires created on an island by the world's most southerly tribe of people. He called it Tierra del Fuego: land of fire. A fun experience was when we travelled along Glacier Alley, where all of the glaciers are named after European countries. This area reminded me of cruising the Inside Passage to Alaska. On one land excursion, I was intrigued to learn that beavers, originally imported for the fur trade, had become a pest.
Galapagos Wildlife Kill
I have written elsewhere about the Hodge family’s Galapagos Islands cruise experience. The islands, which belong to Ecuador, are what I would call “one of God's most special places on Earth.” It was the islands’ creatures that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. So, seeing a wildlife kill there was an unusual and unexpected experience.
In Africa and elsewhere, I have seen the aftermath of many wildlife kills but very few actual kills. In the Galapagos, we were returning to our cruise vessel one evening in our Zodiac tender when we witnessed three orcas (killer whales) hunting a very large sunfish (which can be three meters long and tall). The orcas used our Zodiac to corner the sunfish and pummel it to death. In addition to being apex predators, killer whales are famous for their cooperative hunting tactics, which were on full display that night.
Other Experiences in Latin America
I am fortunate and old enough to have had many more experiences in Latin America. From an active point of view, I have whitewater rafted in Ecuador; trekked on horseback in Patagonia as well as Ecuador; hiked different tracks in Patagonia (I couldn't make it to the best view of Torres del Paine, where my son Adam escorted me back) and in Colombia (to the ruins of their lost city in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, only discovered in 1975); ziplined in Ecuador and in Costa Rica (where my wife Claire got stuck and had to be rescued); travelled by motorized canoe on the Amazon to overnight on a bamboo platform with locals; and stayed on other occasions in luxury lodges. With my mate Ian from Australia, we mountain biked some unbelievably steep slopes to the salt pans of Maras in Peru’s Sacred Valley. On another occasion, I flew over the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru, purported to be an airfield for alien astronauts (see the book Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken). As well, I was once taken to a fancy restaurant in Buenos Aires where steaks were so tender they were cut with spoons. Finally, I was also hosted with about five other top South America sellers at the soccer’s 2014 World Cup quarterfinals in Salvador, Brazil, where the Netherlands beat Costa Rica in a penalty shootout.
My Latin America Dilemma
As you will have read, Goway has been selling Latin America since the 1970s. Despite this fact it is traditionally Goway's least-popular destination region. I don't understand why.
Central and South America are the closest long-haul destinations for Globetrotters to get to from North America, where, in essence, you arrive in the same time zone as the USA and Canada with minimal jetlag. Our dollar goes much further in Latin America than most of Goway's other destinations. I have always found Latin America safer than most other destinations, and the people, all over, are very friendly and hospitable. It is also a year-round destination.
For real travellers, there are amazing wonders to see and experience: think the Galapagos Islands, Patagonia, Easter Island, Iguassu Falls, Machu Picchu, Tikal, Chichén Itzá, Rio's beaches and Carnival, the Panama Canal, Cartagena's pirate history. Then there are the spectacular Andes mountains with magnificent volcanoes, the world's highest capital cities, and beautiful altiplano deserts. There is the mighty Amazon, with its unique river cruises, jungle lodges, and wonderful wild creatures. To visit Antarctica or Easter Island, you will need to stopover in South America.
If you, the reader, have visited Latin America, then I am sure you'll understand my dilemma.
More Goway Origin Stories
"Bussing Down to Rio & Beyond: Goway Goes to Latin America" is the third in our series of origin stories about Bruce Hodge and Goway's over 55 years of globetrotting adventures. Visit Tales from the Road to see all the latest stories as they're published once a month this year.
Bruce Hodge is the Founder & President of Goway Travel. In 1970, he started the company out of his Toronto apartment with nothing but a telephone and a projector. Over 55 years later, Goway has more than 800 team members across three continents who work tirelessly to craft dream vacations for globetrotters. Born and raised in Australia but making his home in Canada, Bruce always had a passion for travel and followed this dream to build one of North America’s leading travel companies.
While his bucket list only gets longer year after year, he continues to explore far and wide across Goway’s slate of over 115 countries on all seven continents. He has run the Athens marathon, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, ventured along the historic Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, trekked to penguin colonies in the Falkland Islands, and bushwhacked through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. He’s continually drawn beyond the horizon to experience all the riches that our wonderful world has to offer.