[DumbfromBirth]

Contiki DATA SHEET

For this guide I will be talking only about Contiki Europe Tours as I have not been on anything else. But this guide should actually just be a warning for you if you are thinking about doing it.

Contiki is a tour company mostly geared towards the younger generation and is widely known for its drunk partying and hookups. It first started out as one bus taking people around and took off from there and they now cover a few continents and have grown into a multi-national company.

Why haven't you heard of it before? Well if you are not australian thats probably why. The tour is insanely popular among australians and a bus would be a mix of australians, americans, canadians and maybe a few people from other countries. There are many different options in tour packages that go different routes with a 10 day trip being the shortest and longest being about 35 days.

What its like?
For the short 10 day trips make sure you are aware of the distance and countries you are covering as there is a good chance that everyday from 8am-4/5pm will be you sitting on a bus, You then have a few hours of sunlight before everyone starts drinking and partying. Longer trips you may stay 2-3 days in each place. During the day bus trip you may visit some historic sites and then depending on what type of trip you booked you will either be staying in tents, bed and breakfasts or hotels. They will cover your breakfast and dinner for 90% of the days so be prepared to take into account your lunch money each day.

Type of people on these tours
People that book these are either too scared, lazy or bored to book their own trip. If you ever hear anyone raving about a contiki tour theres a good chance they fall into one of these categories. There is the chance that they were just lucky and had an epic group which brings me to my next point.

The buses have 51 seats so its going to be a roll of the dice of what type of group you have. You could have a bus completely full of sluts just waiting to hookup or there could be a ton of couples and girls that did the whole trip for the 'scenery'. While you will cross paths for a night with other contiki groups, you are stuck with your group for the whole trip (unless you decide to suddenly bail which actually could be a good idea!)

You will also meet a fair amount of people that drink a lot and I mean ALOT. One night and aussie guy drank 52 beers. The next day he was tripping rolling around the campsite at 11am still wasted.

Is it a good price deal?
No it is not. When you first book it you probably think its cheap but the things you didn't consider are the lunches everyday at gas stations, the odd dinner and snacks here and there, the optional activities which you actually end up doing most of them because everyone else is doing them, then drinking/partying and anything else you buy along the way. With a little smarts you can gain everything a contiki offers by simply staying in hostels for a fraction of the price.

My experience
I did a 14 day contiki tour 2 years ago and was slightly forced into doing it by my mum as it was my first trip abroad at the age of 22. My bus had a 4:1 ratio women to men which sounds awesome but it wasn't. Girls were either too ugly, coupled or girls that were not there to hookup. One very attractive canadian girl said she does not kiss random guys as she does not want to get herpes (her father was a priest). Which left 3-5 doable girls with 2 attractive girls that I wanted to hookup with. Hooked up with one on the 2nd night, and then her friend (the hottest girl on the bus) on the last night wanted to hookup with me but since we were in amsterdam I was way to high and it never happened. She did however hookup with one bucktooth fat aussie dude on the 4th night which stills has left me in disbelief how it happened. She was american so maybe it was his aussie accent!

Bottom line: if you are virgin and have no confidence or are in dire need to get laid. Do it. Otherwise hostels are the way to go.

[Freddy_1]

I will NEVER forget my Contiki trip...

I was 24, had never been out of Sydney let alone on a plane and decided i wanted to travel for a few months to Europe before “settling down” but had no idea where to go and how to get there and Like the OP said Contiki is like a ritual for Australians so after doing a bit of research and seeing which tour they offered i decided to give it a go. I tried to convince any of my friends to come but none of them could due work, g/f, finances etc etc. I thought about postponing the trip until one of my friends could join me but in the end i made one of the best decisions of my life and decided to go solo..i quit work and the next thing I knew I was waving goodbye to family about to go through to customs scared shitlless and thinking to myself “what the hell am I doing”

Highlights included:

* A hot Russian girl would sit next to me for my 22 hour journey to London..I was in heaven when she sat to me and I couldn’t believe my luck until she opened her mouth. It was to this day the worst breath I have smelt and will never forget it..She was so hot though I wanted to try to bang her and thought it might have been a one off thing but I met her in Paris a few days later and still the same. Had to eject.

* Polish/Australian girl who was on the cover of FHM the month prior..( she was amazing and up until then was the hottest girl id ever seen. Us guys would google image here everyday on the trip and she was on the trip with her 2 ugly cock blocking friends..

* Banging my first ever black girl in Paris the 3rd night of the trip

*Getting the most amazing blowjob on a greek beach after leaving a club

*Falling in love with an Italian/american girl who I would end up chasing for the next 2 years

* Discovering how beautiful European women were

* How turned on i was by all these different languages/ accents that i was being exposed to for the first time

* A girl cheating on her husband the whole trip with another guy from group. The worst part was it was their honeymoon and the Husband had no idea until he was told on the last night of the trip..even crazier was he had become best friends with the guy his wife was fucking during the trip.

* Another couple on their honeymoon..the girl telling me she wanted to fuck me the last 2 nights..i didn’t as her husband was a cool guy.

* After a drunken night out one of the girls from the group comes into my room and persuades my roommate to change rooms with her for the night.., she then proceeds to fuck the shit out of me...the rest of the trip she didnt talk to me until the last night when she said she had a b/f back home and felt guilty lol

* 4 of the group getting arrested on the last night of the tour in Amsterdam for having pills on them

* Becoming good friends with an American dude whom I island hopped Croatia with after the tour ended

For me it was a great experience for the first time travelling overseas and triggered the travel the bug in me big time.. however there is no way I would do one now with the information and resources available on the net unlike back then.

[tomtud]

Glad all you guys had great experiences..... I believe there is another contiki post.

I did mine after university. There were two streams, one stay in hotels in town the other camp grounds a bit out of town which was more economical. Spend the cash, and stay in town. Much more easier. Mine was way back in 2001.

The best part is the travel experience. Spend 2-3 days in each city and move on. Then when you finish the trip, you can go back and choose which cities you liked and didn't.

Highly recommended.

[DumbfromBirth]

@freddy sounds like you had a pretty awesome group! Honestly I would not recommend anyone do it. If they must do a travel company go with bus a bout ive heard its alot better and you get way more freedom.

[Espresso]

What would you say was the average age in the group? At what age would you be considered too old (as a guy) to go on a Contiki trip?

I've been wanting to do Contiki for a little while, but the roulette nature of who you'll be stuck with for the whole trip is putting me off, given the price tag.

[DumbfromBirth]

22-26 I would say is ideal but if you are under 30 you are good to go. I dont think there is a 'too old' age as long as you are prepared to drink a bit every night. One thing I forgot to mention is the ratio is almost always in the guys favour. If you have an awesome group and you are not comfortable yet traveling solo in hostels it can be worth the money and a good experience to see a bit of each place.

I would still recommend hostels though, book hostels with pub crawls and you can get basically the same experience for a fraction of the price.