Choosing Your Pace and Difficulty on a Group Tour

Pick a trip that's too slow and you'll spend a week looking at your watch. Pick one that's too hard and you'll spend it looking at the ground, wondering why you didn't stay home. It's a quieter kind of mistake than a bad hotel, and a more expensive one.

This guide is about avoiding it, and it starts by splitting two things that get lumped together.

Difficulty and pace are different things

• Difficulty is how physically demanding the activities are: walking distance, climbs, altitude, heat, terrain.
• Pace is how fast the trip moves: how many places, how many nights in each, how many long transfers and early starts.

A trip can be physically easy and relentless, with a new hotel every night and a six-hour drive between them. Another can be demanding and slow, with a single base and long days on the trail. The rating tells you about the first. The itinerary tells you about the second.

On my Colombia tour with Other Way Round, the itinerary included a climb up the rock at Guatapé. It was part of the plan, but optional, and our leader gave us the choice. Everyone in the group went up. It was intense: so many steps, and steep ones, and somewhere on the way up I realised I probably needed to be in better shape. I'm really glad I went. I had a michelada at the top, one of my favourite drinks, and it made the climb worthwhile.

What I'd pass on is the part about the choice. A tour that tells you what's optional is giving you room to match the day to your legs. Ask for that list before you book, and be honest about your fitness before the day arrives, not halfway up the steps.

What the ratings say

Both G Adventures and Intrepid grade trips on a scale of 1 to 5.

• Intrepid defines the levels in writing: 1 is relaxing; 2 has some easy activities and needs no preparation; 3 is moderate and raises the heart rate, with good fitness needed; 4 means some serious physical activity; 5 is its highest, with difficult activities and extreme conditions.
• G Adventures labels the levels on its trip pages (for example 2 Light, 3 Average, 4 Demanding, 5 Challenging). On the pages we read, we did not find a written definition of each level.

The two scales aren't proven to be equivalent, so treat a 3 on one operator as a prompt to read the itinerary, not as a guarantee.

What a few real ratings look like

Two things to notice. Peru shows the spread: Intrepid's Classic Peru is a 2, while its Inca Trail and Amazon Adventure is a 4, and G Adventures' Amazon to the Andes is also a 4. And Vietnam shows why a rating isn't the whole story: the 10-day and 15-day Intrepid trips both carry a 2, but a 2 doesn't tell you how many nights you sleep in each place.

How to read a day-by-day

Open the itinerary and mark each day with four things.

1. Nights in each place. One-night stops are tiring, whatever the rating.
2. Transfer time. Count the long drive, train and boat days. Some are a highlight; some are just a lot of sitting.
3. Early starts. A sunrise start every third day adds up.
4. The physical bit. Hours of walking, climbs and stairs, altitude, heat, and whether your luggage is carried.

Then count the free half-days. They're where you recover.

Age and fitness

Neither operator sets an upper age limit on the standard trips we checked. Intrepid says it has no maximum age, that travellers have ranged from 18 to 70, and asks them to assess their own fitness. G Adventures says there is no upper age limit on most tours. Individual trips can carry fitness requirements, and the physical rating is the first place to look.

If you have a health concern, or the trip involves altitude or strenuous activity, speak to your doctor before you book. Travel insurance is compulsory on both operators.

Questions to ask before you book

1. How many hours of walking or climbing are on a typical day, and on the hardest day?
2. How many nights in each place, and how many long transfers?
3. What's the altitude, and what is the weather like at that time of year?
4. Is luggage carried, and how far do I carry it?
5. Where are the free half-days or rest days?
6. If I find a day too much, what can I skip or swap?