The teenage survivors of a bus crash that killed five young women on a gap-year adventure in Ecuador were preparing to return to Britain last night after telling their parents that they could not continue their trip in light of the tragedy.

A group leader and four students, taking part in a trip organised by VentureCo, the Warwick-based gap-year specialist, died only days after one of them complained about the hazardous nature of their bus journeys.

Twelve other young Britons suffered injuries and were treated in hospital after a truck careered into their tour bus as they travelled to a remote area to carry out volunteer work on Saturday night.

Parents of the survivors, who were due to fly to the capital Quito last night, told The Times that the youngsters were so shocked that they were unlikely to continue their trip.

Nicola Yudin, whose 19-year-old son Alex suffered cuts and bruises in the crash, said he had told her that he wanted to come home as soon as possible. Mrs Yudin told The Times: “He was very quiet [on the phone], which is not like him. I think they will all fly back as soon as they are able to.

“They just will want to be back home with their families. I think we can understand that’s what he wants to do. It’s a big shock. It’s a tragedy. They are so young.”

Alex, from Harrow, Middlesex, told his mother that the close-knit group were staying together and doing their best to support each other.

A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that it would not fly survivors back to Britain but “we will help with the arrangements”.

The FCO confirmed that the group’s leader, Sarah Howard, 26, from Cheshire, was killed in the crash as were gap students Rebecca Logie, 19, from Lancashire, Elizabeth Pincock, 19, from Somerset, Indira Swann, 18, from Berkshire, and Emily Sadler, 19, from Middlesex.

The group were due to spend 15 weeks together in a language and volunteer programme that was due to take them through the Andes.

They were half an hour from the end of their eight-hour journey from Quito to the coastal town of Puerto López when the accident happened. Police in Ecuador said that a lorry carrying sand crashed into the left side of the bus. With many passengers trapped in the wreckage, the lorry driver fled the scene, near the town of Jipijapa.

Days earlier Ms Swann had told friends on an online blog that she had been sick on the tour bus as it was “the rockyest \ bus I’ve ever been on, it drove through a river!”

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