Hacienda Zuleta - Ecuador

Lauren who has been on 4 In The Saddle rides. Buena Vista! (Beautiful View!) | The first horse I had (Tonio) was perfect for me but then I had Rumi for 2 days who was only 4 years old and he was rather difficult for me to handle in various situations because he was a baby (he was very spooky whilst I was wearing a poncho for instance and wouldn't stand to be mounted). I also tried Benito who was great for me too though fairly spooky with buses - but you can't have everything!

One day one of mum's horses (Caracol) got a bit saddle sore and I saw a few saddle sore marks (white hairs on the withers) on a few horses when we brought them in which is why I knocked them down a touch. However the horses had 2 rest days for every 2 work days which we appreciated and apprently they were to have 2 months off after we'd been.

[Abbie from ITS replies: Thank you for your lovely feedback. We are so pleased that you enjoyed your time at the superb Hacienda Zuleta].

Do you have any comments about the accommodation and food?

Maybe just some clarification that what they call souffle there isn't the same as one in the UK - and it always seems to involve cheese! I'm a picky eater though so I'm hard to please.
Overall though the portion sizes were massive and I nearly always found something to enjoy.

How could we improve the quality of pre-holiday information that we send?

None - it was super thorough. We were caught out in the mountains by how cold it was the first time we went up but that was our fault!

How could we improve the way we handled your booking and payment?

Maybe so we can use hoof miles on a credit card transaction? Mum will be better able to comment on this.

Do you have any other feedback for us?

As an aside the first mounted translator that we had (Jorje) for those first 6 days had really poor English skills. He was lovely and considerate but we're now sad in hindsight about how much details we missed. He was extremely poor at answering our questions - for example I asked him 'were all the horses born at hacienda zuleta?' and Jorge replied 'this land all belongs to hacienda zuleta'. Mum has also asked him questions with opposite meanings and he's said yes to both. Mum asked him 'why is there a yellow ribbon there?' and Jorge told her the name of the crop behind it. The spanish guide would sometimes say long explanations and then we would get a short English version.

Hacienda Zuleta never asked us about our guide and also never told us we could change guide. We thought it would have to be something we mentioned when we got back. We asked for the grandson of the owner to come with us as we'd met him earlier in the trip and his English as excellent despite him only being 15, and he was a joy. Then for our final full day we had a guide called Stefan who was fantastic and we have told the Hacienda so! David at the Hacienda actually wondered why they hadn't hired Stefan first. The Hacienda tried to tell us it could've been an issue with our accents but everyone else could understand us, and that still doesn't explain the lack of detail from Spanish to English. We asked at the Hacienda for a partial refund for the translator as he was honestly not nearly up to standard and we would like you to pursue this please.

[Abbie from ITS replies: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have discussed your feedback with the team at Zuleta, including the owner Fernando. This was the third time Jorge had guided English-speaking guests, and there were no previous issues. We understand that as soon as the Zuleta team were aware, a replacement guide was brought in. We would always encourage you to discuss any issues locally with your hosts, so that the situation can be rectified as quickly as possible.]