What happened after we cancelled our Galapagos tour in Ecuador due to civil unrest?

It is now 4 months since we made a hasty return from Mexico rather than continue our plans to travel from Oaxaca Mexico to Quito Ecuador and on to the Galapagos Islands. You may remember that 2 days before our flight to Quito Ecuador an Ecuadorian drug lord escaped from prison and all hell broke loose in Ecuador. The president declared a state of emergency and cities were locked down. Lance and I were in total agreement that Ecuador was not the place for us to be traveling to at that time and we immediately went into action. We contacted the US and NZ consolates to get more information and also our travel agent and travel insurance on their emergency number. Our travel agent contacted Intrepid Tours to find out what was going on and to cancel our tour. Of course, they have a cancellation policy, and we were only 2 days out from starting the $13,000 6-day boat tour of the Galapagos Islands. They made it very clear that they would not be refunding any money and assured us that it was completely safe to land in Ecuador. The news report advised us otherwise, with armed soldiers and tanks patrolling the streets, people working from home and schools closed. The problem was that the government advised: Exercise increased caution in Ecuador due to civil unrest, crime, and kidnapping. Some areas have increased risk. Please note that this warning is still in place! Because it was level 2 it meant that people could cross the border, therefore our tour would still be going ahead. But without us! Lance and I were in complete agreement that we would not risk traveling to Ecuador at that time. Our wonderful travel agent Samara from Flight Centre Eastridge took charge and gave us some options to travel home. We paid for another night's accommodation in Oaxaca Mexico, which was no hardship as it is a fabulous place. Then our cheapest option was to fly home via Mexico City and into Houston for 4 nights and then home to Auckland New Zealand. We paid the extra money and took this option. You can read about the fun we had (not) in Houston in my previous posts. Then we began the game of recovering some of our costs. Intrepid Travel was not interested, they offered us a 10% discount on another tour. Which was an insult as they were advertising a 20% discount at the time. They would not talk to us and we had a couple of pretty ordinary emails. However ... Southern Cross Travel, who we had our insurance with, was fantastic. Initially, they said that we may not qualify for any refund but they may consider a claim. We were treated with respect and the person who managed our case was empathetic and we felt listened to. Consequently, we were refunded all of our 'out-of-pocket' costs. A total of $16,901! How amazing is that! To conclude, we will never use Intrepid Travel again, we have traveled with them in the past but, I repeat, we will never use them again. And, we will only use Southern Cross Travel Insurence and will sing their praises wherever we land!