Anxious to chat

DianaS

Arriving Santiago, Chile on Tuesday, October 21, 2014 with a friend, from JFK/Miami. Would love to hear from others on my tour.

Tommye Fleming

We have a group of six traveling. One from Santa Fe, one from St. Paul, four from St. Louis. Although two of us are actually Florida residents. We arrive Santiago October 21 as well. I will be doing a daily travel blog , posting photos and daily activities on www.travelpod.com. If you have friends or relatives who want to travel along, you can send me their emails.

My name is Tommye Fleming, from St. Louis. This is our 5th Tauck trip.

Margie 58

Hi I believe we are also on your tour starting on 24th October. We are doing back-to-back tours starting with Peru and the Galapagos Islands on 7th October. We are two couples travelling from Sydney Australia. We'll look forward to meeting you in Santiago. We leave in a week so getting quite excited now.

Crackeroo

My husband and I are on this trip now. Currently in Buenos Aires, leaving for Iguazu this afternoon. You will probably have much better weather than what we have had so far. There has been a lot of rain and snow in Patagonia.

Robynb

Hi Margie,

We are travelling to South America on Monday 6 October and doing Peru and the Galpagos commencing on 7 October and then Essence of South America commencing on 24 October. i think that we will be on tour together. Looking forward to meeting you.
Robyn and Gabby Bloom

Margie 58

Hi Robyn,

Where are you travelling from? We are coming directly from Sydney via Santiago and arriving on the 6th. Looking forward to our adventure and meeting everyone.

Robynb

We are travelling from Sydney on Monday 6 October. we are travelling through to Lima and spending an extra night there.
looking forward to meeting you.

Margie 58

Hi Robyn,

We are on LA806 which is actually the Qantas flight departing at 12:25pm and then LA642 to Lima. You are probably on the same flights so we may well see you along the way. I'm sure we'll have the same transfer from the airport in Lima if we don't cross paths beforehand. Save travels

Margie 58

Hi Crackeroo:

I presume you have now finished your tour and I hope you had a good time despite the weather. Is there anything we need to know that could be useful to our enjoyment of this tour. I hope you have time to answer. Thanks

Crackeroo

We returned home just a few hours ago. I will collect my thoughts and respond. We had a fantastic time.

Crackeroo

Will start with some info on hotels during this tour.
All hotels were clean and comfortable. The Ritz in Santiago and Llao Llao stand out as the most comfortable and best breakfasts. The wait staff at the Ritz were attentive and personable. Nicely located near good restaurants. We had pizza on our free night at Tirimisu and enjoyed it. The Llao Llao is about a 30 minute cab ride ($20 US) from Bariloche. The spa services are good and reasonably priced. The Hotel Cumbres in Puerto Varas was probably the most basic but fit the style of the area. We actually asked our tour director to get the gift shop opened for some shopping since many of the stores were closed because of the time we arrived into the city and the national holiday that extended through the weekend.
Caesar Park in Buenos Aires is located across the street from a high end shopping mall. It is also in walking distance from El Sanjuanino, where you will find great empanadas. I recommend the caprese.
Caesar Park, run by Sofitel, in Rio, is also nicely located to shopping and across the street from Ipanema Beach and a short walk from Copacabana Beach.

Crackeroo

Thought of something else you may find helpful. We brought a small amount of currency for each country. You can charge everywhere. I suggest bringing US dollars for Argentina. The official exchange rate is $8.20 or so per US dollar. On the street though, they will give as much as $14 pesos for every dollar.

Tommye Fleming

I am taking an all-weather coat with a detachable lining. I can layer with sweater, vest, shirt. Will that be sufficient? What were your temperature extremes?

Also, did you have any issue with mosquitos? How often did you have to use DEET?

Thanks for your help, Crackeroo.

Crackeroo

Hi Tommye. What you describe should be fine. We started our tour Sept. 19th. Sept 21 was the start of spring. The coldest temps were in Puerto Montt, and Bariloche. It actually snowed while we were crossing the Andes. Santiago and Buenos Aires were pleasant with highs in the 60's and low 70's and low's in the 50's. Iguazu was the warmest with temps in the low 80's. That is the only location where we needed bug spray. There were mosquitoes and no seeums. Rio was mild with temps in the low 80's. Check the weather channel app but keep in mind it tends to be wrong. They predicted rain almost every day we were on tour. We wound up getting rain three days. And aside from rain in Bariloche, it didn't interfer with any of the touring. My advice is to prepare for everything.

Tommye Fleming

FYI -- The all weather coat has come in handy. It snowed here in Bariloche today and it was 34 degrees F. Weather so bad in Buenos Aires that we have been delayed a day. Snowed on and off all day. Hopefully we will get off tomorrow -- it is scheduled to be 25 in the morning! Aye yai yai!