Travel Review: Luxury South America Vacation, Chile & Argentina, Buenos Aires, Torres del Paine, Tierra del Fuego, Kayaking, Hiking

We were connected to this travel agent through Zicasso. We were clear in our expectation of a customized independent itinerary. He told us that he had considerable experience delivering exactly that and prepared our itinerary. In the end, we did not receive an independently curated trip, but found ourselves passed over from one local tourist agency to another and fitted into large group tours. The itinerary in no way reflected this, and in many of it’s descriptions was out-right false. Compared to our travels over the years throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, this trip was the most expensive and the most “tour-bus like”, and left us receiving the poorest value. We take full accountability for this miss – we should have asked many more questions and penetrated the vague responses we received from our travel agent (in spite of his insistence that all was good, and that we needed to lighten up, be more Latin, and go with the flow). I’m documenting this so others might make better decisions with their money, time and choice of supplier.

Some specifics…
- The agents that met us at each location were unable to answer our questions about the logistics while we were in their location. We never fully understood what their point was. They simply provided us with vouchers for upcoming activities but could provide no details. We were to get a call each night on the next day’s activities. Sometimes we got the call which told us nothing but pick-up time, often we did not.
- There was a constant struggle to understand any details for what the next day’s agenda would entail… what kind of outer-wear we would need, whether lunch was possible on the trip or we needed to bring one, whether we should carry water, what the timeline for the day would be, etc.. What information our itinerary provided was often-times wrong. This might seem like a small issue, but when faced, for example, with a difficult (22km distance, 800 meter climb,) 12 hour remote hiking day, and an itinerary incorrectly saying lunch was to be provided, it suddenly became a real problem.
- I may be expecting too much here, given that we could not get information for the specific tours the agents represented, but there was so much local information that would have been immensely helpful that they must be aware of, but did not share. For example, in the town of El Chalten, restaurants do not accept anything but local cash (no credit cards) and there is only one ATM, located at the Tourist Info at one extreme end of town (which we stopped at when we first arrived… had we only known!). Sometimes we had to pay the national park entrance, sometimes not. This required considerable sums of local cash. Again, our itinerary provided outright false information on this. 
- We were more often than not put into large group tours. Waiting for a bus load of other travelers, moving from hotel to hotel picking up and dropping off, often running late, sometimes almost an hour. We could not sit together at times. What information was available was often focused on the Spanish speakers. We found ourselves being herded from one transport to another, with little to no understanding of what was coming when. Again, this was in no way presented as such in our itinerary.

Certainly, it was not all bad. We had some outstanding experiences…
- Our expreience in BA, a collective group dinner creation with lots of wine, stories and ineraction was great. 
- When we did have a specialized, dedicated guide, it was a great experience. Huge shout out to our guides in Torres Del Paine, Tierra del Fuego, and for our BA tour. They were informative, fun, curious and completely engaged – no questions were too sensitive of off-limits. They provided wonderful cultural immersions. By the way, our Torres del Paine guide learned that we had no lunches (the itinerary wrongly talked in detail about the lunch that would be provided) and were about to embark on a demanding day long hike, he insisted on detouring to a location where we could get some basic provisions.
- The kayaking tour in Torres del Paine was great. 
As I said, we should have better penetrated what we were getting and how everything would work. Shame on us. My hope is that others learn from our mistakes, and understand that even a well regarded agency and its representatives will have individuals who are not altogether professional and transparent.