Warning!! EcoTours Vanuatu (Run by Pascal)

Never take a tour with EcoTour (run by Pascal). went for a Kayak trip with them and turned out to be totally different from what it says on the brochure:
1. never got picked up from the hotel and had to go to where they told us to be with our money
2. instead of going down with the flow in the river, we started from a place that was supposed to be the ending place and went up, which could ve been ok if we were even on water for more than an hour or WENT TO ANY PLACE THE BROCHURE PROMISED. we never went to any where closed to "lush tropical forest"
3. OK THIS IS THE WORST PART! we had to wait around while the tour guide stole mangoes and grapefruits
4. it says "Free Bonus: see sharks and turtles" on the brochure but that thing didnt happen and the tour guide didnt mention or explain or apologize even tho i brought it up bunch of times

Vanuatu and the people are really really beautiful and nice. the best place I have even been. and that is why this kind of company should disappear so it doesn't give Vanuatu a bad name.

Were Pascal and the tour guide ni-Vans or ex-pats?

Pascal was french (i think but not so sure) and the guide was Ni-Van.
one of them was not even a tour guide and he was the guide's cousin and said it was his first time going to a tour and he doesn't even know what's going on.
he said he only knows that he was going to get mangoes and grapefruits.

when I met Pascal, he just took off without giving me change from what i paid, so I had to call him back and asked for the change.

Pascal was french (i think but not so sure) and the guide was Ni-Van.
one of them was not even a tour guide and he was the guide's cousin and said it was his first time going to a tour and he doesn't even know what's going on.
he said he only knows that he was going to get mangoes and grapefruits.

and he (Ni-Vanuatu) asked me You paid for this?

when I met Pascal, he just took off without giving me change from what i paid, so I had to call him back and asked for the change.
i got the money at the end but it was from the ni-vanuatu tour guide. really hope he got the money from Pascal.

Edited by: almondyk

Some times I think the islands are magnets for ex-pat con-men. This can be embarassing for the locals, when they realise.

Interesting how people can have very different experiences with the same company. I just returned from Vanuatu after having dealt with Pascal / http://www.vanuatu-ecotour.com.vu/) a number of times:
- hired a mountain bike for 10 days
- did the kayaking tour mentioned above.
- did a bush walk tour
- did a mountain biking tour

In all of these I got picked up from the hotel at the exact time Pascal said he would. Each tour had either Pascal or a Ni-Van as a guide. They were all extremely friendly, multi-lingual, very knowledgeable, and ready to have a lot of fun. The only negative I could say is to not bother asking Henry if it is going to rain - he got it wrong on every tour. I'm keen to go back and finish off the other tours I missed out on.

Specifically with the kayaking, it was about a 40 min bus trip to Turtle Bay on the east coast. The kayaking started off with ~20 mins across a bay, and then into a rainforested river. We continued for ~40 mins up the river until we hit a village at the main road. It was a reasonably tough paddle, but coming back was easy. We did stop a number of times, and the guides collected a lot of different kinds of fruit (black man's apple, guava, passion fruit, avocado, and something else than didn't translate). But each of them were offered to the kayakers to try, and were part of the experience. At the end, there were ocean pools with sharks and turtles. All I can guess is that there was some issue with the resort at the time, and he had to offer a different trip?

I think that your comments are a bit harsh. It sounds like you had a bad experience alright but that doesn't make Pascal a crook.

I was his very first customer and have kept in touch with him going back many times over the past few years to do tours with him. I have always found him well organised and honorable to deal with an genuinely tries to give good value to all of his customers. Every tour that I have been on with him the other people on the tour have just raved about the experience.

His desire is to develop the skills of his local guides and as you have experienced this has proven to be a difficult task - they just think about the world from an entirely different perspective to the rest of us. It sounds like on your tour he was trusting his guides to do the tour without him and it didn't work!

He is French, has lived in Vanuatu for something like 15 years, and is definitely not a con man. Much of that time was spent working for aid or education organisations helping develop the local communities.

I have worked with him organising several volunteer projects where he generously donated his time and money to work with us on projects to benefit local communities.

I was in Vanuatu in March this year and my experience with eco tours was phenomenal. You should raise your concerns with Pascal and try sorting it out before telling the world through lonely planet such harsh comments. I am sure that if you email him or if you had spoken to him directly as opposed to his guides, he would have done something about it. What his tours offer tourists are a side of Vanuatu many tourists don't often experience and that is what mother nature has to offer. Pascal is French, he's not even a native but his passion for nature and the land is trully beyond that of a local.

Pascal took special care to make my experience unique, valuable and spectacular. He was highly recommended by staff at Irririki resort and the tourist information centre in Port villa. Other tourists we met also recommended him greatly and some even mentioned that the reason why they returned was just to complete his tours. To be honest I am planning another trip to vanuatu to complete his tours myself!

It sounds like both you and Pascal have been out done by the misdoings of a guide. I'm sure pascal would be appalled at this guide.

Eco tours was a fabtastic experience for me, I have travelled the world and have been on an extensive number of tours. Eco tours is by far one of the best.

Wow - three one post wonders in support of Pascal. Stephanieh has "travelled the world" but has only been compelled to join TT in order to post above. kiwitraveller199 is a "traveller" and has worked on several volunteer projects in Vanuatu but also only joined TT in order to post in this thread. And there was chudles who just returned from Vanuatu and has nothing to say other than post in this thread about Pascal.

This kind of stuff makes one believe everything that OP says. Pascal, you'd have been much better served if you had posted as yourself in order to refute the charges. One post wonders do not serve your cause at all.

It's true that the above was my first post, and is probably the only thread on this site that I will post on. I'm a heavy internet user, but am mostly a lurker. As a note, the person who started this thread hasn't written on any others either.

Pascal is becoming more aware of the need for an internet presence / reviews etc, and asked me to write about my experiences on his tours on this web site and a few others. Because I had a such a great time I had no problem doing this. I was quite surprised when I found this negative post above.

• Search for me on ebay, if you think I'm an alias of Pascal
• Plus, Pascal's English is not quite good enough to write any of the above posts either :)

This attack on Pascal is the only criticism I have read on him (well it is really about his guide), yet he is one of the most heralded, ethical, and caring operators in Vanuatu with over 50 postings that I can find testifying to that fact from travellers that have experienced his tours. No I am not writing this on his behalf, nor do I receive any benefit in any way from my support of him, or his business.
At the same time I respect your right to complain, although I'm sure a more amicable approach would of generated a better outcome for you.

To the other poster: As an expat, I do take offence at the cowardly and unfounded remarks about expats in Vanuatu. Without expats the Vanuatu economy (there goes your holiday...) would collapse in 48 hours, we bring our money here, we work honestly and pay taxes, import and pay duties, train people that have nothing, provide education, knowledge and skills within a system that is not fair to expats, but somehow your negligible knowledge gives you the wisdom to comment.

There are good & bad expats, like there are good & bad NiVanuatu people, just like there are good & bad tourists...please get a perspective and some facts before insulting decent people next time.

Viva, I wrote that as someone who has lived as an expat in Solomon Islands for 5 years, and travelled extensively there for over 20. There are definitely expat conmen (and women) in that country and Fiji, and I am sure there are in Vanuatu too.
Incidentally, there is a recent thread about a local who conned a tourist group in Solomon Islands, too.
In my experience, the "bad" expats usually target locals, either ripping them off financially, or sexually targetting their women and children.

I back Ozzie on this all the way. I've met good and bad expats in various countries, more good than bad but it's the bad (many) that are remember the most. Like bad advertising, bad because it's memorable, or bad news, more sensational than good news.

"either ripping them off financially, or sexually targetting their women and children" is exactly what I've encountered.