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Turtle, Ecuador

Reviews

Your Words – We tell it like it is! Holiday Reviews by previous Exodus travellers  

Here at Exodus we thrive on feedback from our customers. It’s the only way we can ensure our trips continue to be the best they can be. So, for the real tales, twists and turns of the trip you’re interested in, look no further than the reviews from our previous travellers.

Simply use the selector below to search our trip reviews and start reading real feedback from real Exodus travellers who have ‘been there and done that’!

Lots of our clients also like to post handy tips and advice about their travels. It’s great to know what to expect on an Exodus adventure before you go, so make the most of their experience and you’ll make the most of yours!

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Once you return from your Exodus adventure holiday, you will be emailed a link to add your review. Any feedback collected is posted onto our website, totally unedited.

Alternatively you can navigate to the relevant trip page and add your review via the Reviews tab.

Reviews

Best Holiday Ever

Hotel is run by a family. I cannot overstate how well they treated us. Buffet meals three times per day. Free WiFi. The snow was amazing. We had no cross country skiing experience before. Tour guides were excellent and coached us around 3-4 hours per day. Massage / Pilates / Yoga classes helped greatly with muscle soreness. I thought I was relatively fit, but I found by the end of the morning session I was happy to relax for the rest of the day. Despite eating well, I think I have lost a couple of kg on the trip!

Most Inspirational Moment

Being able to ski 10k by myself.

Advice for Potential Travellers

The fitter you are the more fun you will have. Rooms are comfortable but not luxurious. There is plenty of space to relax in the lobby of the hotel. The hotel has a gym, billiard table, sauna and table-tennis table. If you are looking to ski and then relax it is fantastic. If you want to party and dance all night, this is not the right place to go.

Suggestions

From what I could observe, the hotel gets a lot of repeat business, and for good reason.

venabu cross country skiing

Well organised easy going cross country skiing in really friendly hotel with excellent food and facilities. Excellent cross country ski guides – highly adaptable to needs of group.

Most Inspirational Moment

Snow shoe trip to wonderful frozen waterfall

Thoughts on Group Leader

No one leader. Ski guides organised us with no fuss

Advice for Potential Travellers

Go on this trip for relaxing cross country skiing

Suggestions

If you want challenging skiing don't go on beginners week

Lovely area, great Hotel, excellent food and great gudes

If you are into cross country skiing or want to learn this is a great choice. The guides are very good and extremely helpful. The atmosphere is excellent and the fact the guides return so often speaks volumes. The hotel is comfortable and warm, the rooms are not stylish but are good, upgrade id you want a bigger one. The food is very good and a wide variety available for all tastes. The staff are very friendly and helping the environment and love of the area is as important as profit at this family run hotel.

Most Inspirational Moment

Seeing the sunrise on the Rondane NP Mountains

Thoughts on Group Leader

There wasn't one! All the guides helped the guests and no specific leader was needed. There are guests from Germany, Norway, Netherlands and GB and it worked just fine.

Advice for Potential Travellers

Mitts not Gloves definitely. Take layers but you don't need too much kit as you exercise so much. Buffs are good

Suggestions

The guides are really flexible and we had 3 days of snowshoeing one being a full day ascent.

Alison - Venabu Cross Country skiing

A great introduction to cross country skiing in Scandinavia. The hotel ski guides were really helpful and sorted us out on the waxing which we had never done before. The hotel was good – free tea and coffee at all times made it feel very homely. Buffets were excellent with plenty of choice.

Most Inspirational Moment

Probably 2 inspirational moments - we had good displays of the Northern Lights - which was a real bonus & also on a ski safari the guide persuaded us to "climb" on skis to a hill top 300 feet above the ski track. We had fantastic views and a great ski back down - which I had not thought I would be able to do.

Thoughts on Group Leader

There was not a Group Leader as the holiday was via Headwater but the ski guides from the hotel were very good - they were great leaders and also considered conditions on the day and the abilities of the group.

Advice for Potential Travellers

We really enjoyed having booked a week when there were ski safaris as well as the guiding. The ski safaris were longer days and had more off track.

Suggestions

This was our first time in Scandinavia & we really liked that there was a mix of track skiing (which we are familiar with) and off track skiing.

Off track at Venabu

First day “off track” was daunting but by the last day it was fantastic and so so much more exciting. We had great guides from whom I learnt new skills. We were relieved we could cope with the temperatures at the end of March which were perfect for X country skiing. The hotel provided us with plenty of entertainment and was “the” place to be for many other tourists.

Most Inspirational Moment

Being able to ski on open snow across the side of mountains.

Thoughts on Group Leader

Excellent.

Advice for Potential Travellers

Go for it!

Suggestions

Nothing that comes to mind.

Delicious Norway

A superb location for sampling the delights of winter in Norway. The hotel was authentically Norwegian – lots of wood and candles, excellent smoked/marinaded/baked fish and meat, with a few veggie options, mouth-watering desserts (several of us “bagged” our faves before the earlybirds – aka The Germans – scraped the plates), good skis, help with waxing and great tuition and group leading. The sauna was very welcome after the day’s battering – sorry “getting to grips with XC skiing” and the West Wing room was unusually spacious for a ski holiday.

Most Inspirational Moment

The slideshow from Lars on Venabu and the mountains gave us a bigger picture of the area and the Norwegian buffet on Wednesdays was delightful.

Thoughts on Group Leader

Robert, Richard and Siobhan went the extra mile to help us, both on and off the skis. Robert was excellent at tailoring the routes to the changing conditions, Richard was the waxing guru and his wife Siobhan mentored us newbies like a Pro.

Advice for Potential Travellers

Practice your balance! Yoga or Pilates are good. XC skis are a lot more nervous than downhill and tip you off far more frequently, forwards and backwards as well as sidewards. If the snow is soft it's OK but it got icy towards the end of our stay and my coccyx hasn't forgiven me yet.

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING: VENABU

This is a great location to get away from the daily frustrations of work, commuting etc. The location is absolutely stunning when the sun is out. This holiday is suitable for cross country skiiers of all levels from beginners to more advanced.

Most Inspirational Moment

We had a week when it snowed a lot so the most inspirational moment was the day we had sun and could finally get an idea of the beautiful mountain location all around. We were lucky enough to spot with Robert, the local ski guide, a herd of reindeer moving up the mountain, they were far away but still exciting!

Thoughts on Group Leader

There was no group leader on this trip, however, the hotel has two great ski guides who take out the hotel guests on cross country ski tours. Wenche and Robert are very nice and open to any questions someone may have, it was a pleasure spending time skiing with them.

Advice for Potential Travellers

Be prepared for some fun days in the snow regardless of weather, even if it snows during the week the surroundings are magical.

Suggestions

I think I will come back to Venau at some point, it was a great holiday!

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING: VENABU

It was very nice hotel with excellent food, bus connection to the airport is comfortable. Our ski instructor are all very helpful and nice. Feeling like going again next year 🙂

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING: VENABU

Excellent, professional and friendly set up, with comprehensive tuition and guiding. The full board option is very good value for money in what can be an eye-wateringly expensive (in GBP terms) country.

Most Inspirational Moment

Placing my skis in the parallel tracks and realising that I can glide; Heading out on my own in the afternoon round the hotel and finally 'getting' the rhythm right; Snowshoeing through the woods and coming out onto a viewpoint over the frozen waterfall.

Thoughts on Group Leader

Not really a group leader as such (it's managed by the hotel) but Robert and his team of giudes / instructors were really friendly, helpful and patient. Instruction and tours were tailored to the group experience, with alternatives offered and there were extra training sessions in the afternoons focusing on specific skills, if you wanted to practise.

Advice for Potential Travellers

If you want a drink in the evenings, bring some duty free with you and don't expect alpine style apres ski!

Suggestions

Really enjoyable holiday, good value with all the food included, great fun.

CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING: VENABU

This is an excellent mountain hotel. There is plenty of variety from new to x-country ski to off track mountain skiing

Thoughts on Group Leader

Although there is no resident Exodus rep the hotel guides (Robert and Wenka pronounced Venka) made us very welcome. They are both skilled skiers and knowledgable about the tracks and mountain terrain.

Advice for Potential Travellers

The brochure understates the ski potential by a long way. The hotel Ski Safari trips are worth the holiday in their own right.The leaders were able to accomodate guest with litterally no x-country ski experiance to those of us with 30 years skiing.This hotel is also the start and finish point for some DNT hut to hut routes so for those who would like longer trips there are DNT huts within easy day skiing 

Suggestions

As with every where in Norway alcohol is expensive by UK standards (at least N of England and Scotland).The tradational Norweigan buffet mid week will not be to every ones taste and tradationally they are not as veggie as many UK veggies would like. The horse, whale and raw fish dishes are intersting to try. More familiar reindeer, beef and lamb dishes were popular.Fish eating veggies are well catered for with a different fish every evening, there were also pure veggie options with chick peas and beans on the cold buffet.