About us

Eric:

My name is Eric Buschbell and I was born in 1967 in Cologne. I finished my education in the Hotel business and left Germany in 1991 to see something of the world. I thought I'd be back in Cologne six months later. But I got the taste for traveling and I became a travel addict. For the first three years I traveled from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego (Patagonia), back to Alaska, traveling over to Russia through Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.

But I fell in love with Venezuela and I had to come back to this beautiful country! In most places I had to work to earn the money for my further travel. I arrived in Venezuela with just 100 $US in my pocket and spoke mostly no Spanish. I was lucky and found a job as tour guide for German tourists. Since then I've worked for seven years guiding one and two week roundtrips through Venezuela and North of Brazil.

Family:

My wife Yaritza worked for four years in a travel agency in Caracas and studied German and English. 1999 she gave birth to our first child "Jessica". Because of missing out on quality time with my family I decided to stop my work as a tour guide and we settled down in Santa Elena to start our own company, called "Backpacker Tours". In July 2002 our second child "Joel" was born.

Backpacker Tours:

Our aim is it to offer high quality tours with good equipment and experienced guides for reasonable prices. We have been very successful for the first couple of years and now hope to grow!

In Easter 2004 we started to build our first Backpacker Camp - Posada Los Pinos!

Backpacker Tours is a Venezuelan / German run company.

Thanks for reading our little story and we hope to meet you soon!!

YARI and ERIC