Hotels:
Rio de Janeiro - Belmond Copacabana Palace
Located right on Copacabana Beach. An old, luxurious hotel with a lot of history. The Tauck rooms were on ocean facing suites in the newer wing. A nice swimming pool area is kind of the hub of activity, more so than a smallish lobby.
One evening there was an event at the hotel and it looked like the Academy Awards with limo after limo pulling up dropping off tuxedoed men and women dressed to the nines.
Iguazu Falls - Belmond Das Cataratas
A functional hotel located within the National Park, which means you have access to the falls when people not staying at the hotel don’t. The hotel is right across the street from the start of a couple of trails that run along the falls. The hotel has a nice swimming pool.
You will likely see coati (or several of them) during your visit to Iguazu Falls.
Buenos Aires - Alvear Palace
An older, functional hotel located in one of the more well to do areas. A lot of old ‘palaces’ are located in this area, that have been turned into consulates/embassies. The rooftop bar wasn’t operational during our visit. The Alvear Grill and the Lobby Bar were both nice.
Millahue Valley - Vina Vin Resort
An unusual hotel for a Tauck tour. It is a artsy, boutique hotel located in a vineyard. Each room is unique, with its own very artsy decor. Activities include horseback riding or bicycle riding and a several associated with wine.
As an aside, not being a ‘winey’ I consumed more wine on this tour than I have in the last year combined. So if you’re a wine drinker (like my wife is) this could be the tour for you.
Santiago - Ritz Carlton
A functional hotel, but with very basic food options restaurants. We encountered unseasonably cold weather here. The local guides mentioned that they had to bring back their winter clothes that they had put away in early September. They mentioned how they rarely get any rainfall from October through April, but it was starting to rain as we headed to the airport to catch our plane home.
The Pan-American games were going on while we were in Santiago. We weren’t impacted but if we had stayed one more day we would have been because the area near the hotel was included in the route of one of the games bicycle races.
Here are the daily itinerary sheets provided by the Tour Director.
Here are some General Comments, from a person that likes to be 'wowed' either by natural wonders, amazing man-made creations, or things of significant historical importance. I provide my preferences simply to put my comments in perspective. I'm sure everyone has their own set of drivers that would fuel their comments about a tour.
The ‘Wow’ factor is present during Rio and peaks during the visit to Igauzu Falls and falls off significantly during the rest of the tour.
The ‘Wows’ in Rio were Sugarloaf Mountain and Christ the Redeemer. Other activities in Rio included a pre-tour visit to the Agua-Rio aquarium, a boat ride on Guanabara Bay, a visit to Samba City (a behind the scenes look at Carnival), and a Brazilian barbecue. In Buenos Aires you get its version of a barbecue. You get lots of opportunities to eat beef and drink wine on this tour.
The ‘Wow’ in Iguazu Falls is, as you would expect, the falls. The water level at the falls during our visit was 5 times the normal water level. Almost the entire visit at the falls was ‘Wow’.
The only thing that went not as we had hoped was the boat ride to the falls didn’t happen because the person that was going to provide this, their credit card machine wouldn’t work (we didn’t find that out until he picked us up at the hotel and we tried to pay). This activity was one of the excursions offered by Tauck that we hadn’t selected. Unlike most Tauck tours that we’ve been on where optional excursions are provided you can only do one, even if you’d be willing to pay for the others.
The excursion 14 of the 16 people on our tour selected was the helicopter ride over the falls and a visit to a bird sanctuary. Both elements of this excursion were very enjoyable. The two people that selected the boat ride option said they enjoyed it. Only two of us had wanted to do both excursion options.
The excursions in Buenos Aires, for me, was highlighted by the evening Tango Show. Other activities included tours of the opera house, Recoleta cemetery (where Evita Peron is buried), a local market. One of the days in Buenos Aires was spent visiting a noted silversmith’s shop and a gaucho demonstration in San Antonio de Areco, a small town about two hours from the hotel.
The Chilean portion of the tour was very low key and focused on activities at the Vina Vic hotel.
The only aspect of the tour in Santiago was a drive by city tour, to provide a glimpse of some of the older sights of the city followed by lunch at the Ritz Carlton. From the Ritz, we did a short walk on our own to go to the top of the tallest building in South America. The sights from the top are amazing even in the cool, grey weather we had. If we had, had crystal clear blue skies the views would have been unparalleled.
I have pictures for most everything discussed if people are interested.
