Travel Review: Luxury South America Christmas Vacation, Argentina, Chile, Torres del Paine Horseback Riding, Buenos Aires Tango

We worked with this travel company from Chile and received outstanding service.  After having worked with them, we highly recommend them for any travel arrangements!  We are a family of 4 (with 2 teenagers) and we traveled with our neighbors, another family of 5 with 3 teenagers.  Our first contact was via Skype with our agent who listened to the type of trip we wanted to have and the places we wanted to see.  He then referred us to one of her agents who worked with us to plan the entire trip.  We started communicating with them in April for a end of the year 15 day holiday trip. She was very responsive, professional and knowledgeable.  We followed almost all of her recommendations regarding hotels, sights to visit, tours and experiences to have, etc.  We were very happy with everything she recommended.  Here is a brief review of the trip:

-arrival for a one day visit to Santiago, Chile with a private tour -- our agent met us at hotel and had a bag of goodies for us as a welcome package -- all things we would need to make our tour more enjoyable.  She assured us she was just a phone call away for anything we needed.  

-flight and transfer to Chiloe to a fantastic hotel recommended by our agent -- We stayed for 3 days and did excursions (hikes, horseback riding, boating).  Upon arrival we found a tray of appetizers and bottles of wines in our rooms for the adults and sodas and cookies for the teenagers - a welcome gift arranged by our agent.  It was so thoughtful to have that waiting for us.  The stay at the hotel was fantastic!

-transfer to lake region - Our agent arranged for the hotel to cook us a special Christmas dinner, a whitewater rafting trip, and a full day tour of the lake area.  Again, everything was wonderful.  We had 4 people on the trip who had special diets and/or allergies and everyone was accommodated throughout the trip.  

-flight and transfer for a 4 day stay at Torres del Paine- This was the only hotel we chose instead of our agent recommending it for us.  While we found the hotel to be good, this is the only hotel we had some complaints about their level of service.  We all commented that if we had followed our agent's recommendation we probably would have found a better hotel.  Nonetheless, the stay at the hotel was fantastic and one of the highlights of the trip because of the amazing scenery and excursions.  It was the perfect place to stay for a first visit to Torres del Paine.

-Transfer to Calafate, and visit to glacier Perito Moreno.  Again, great visit and our agent arranged everything for us - transfers, excursions, etc.  She again had arranged for two bottles of wine to be in our rooms at our arrival.   It is here that we realized our son had lost his passport!  Our agent was top notch helping us handle this unexpected problem.  She contacted the previous hotel, all the drivers who transported us the previous day, the local airline to figure out how our son could travel within Argentina without a passport, etc.  She also researched for us and send us the links to the US embassy on what we needed to do in case passport lost.  We thought we would need to stay a couple of extra days in Buenos Aires to get him a new passport.  She made hotel reservations near the embassy.  Luckily, about 30 hours later the passport was found by one of the hotel drivers; but it was a 6 hour drive from us.  The hotel had the driver bring it to us and our agent rearranged my trip to Buenos Aires so I could stay in Calafate until the passport arrived.  Our agent was top notch in helping us through this process.  She always answered her cell, no matter how late we called - and this was over new year's eve and new year's day!  She was emailing us, calling others, rearranging flights, etc. to make sure we could handle anything in case passport was not found.  I was impressed with her level of engagement and help! 

-Flight to Buenos aires, tango show, full day tour.  Again, everything was great. We only wished tour had been a little longer. We were dropped off at airport a little too early. 

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the trip.  Outside of the passport snafu, we had no issues.  Everything was handled with professionalism, safety, timeliness, and friendliness.  Our agent even checked us in early at all the 4 flights we took within Chile and to Argentina and would email us the boarding passes the day before the flights!  So nice to have her take care of the details!  We highly recommend this agent and her company.