Journey to the End of the World, Patagonia and the Antarctic Regions of South America
Our flight from Easter Island arrived back in Santiago around 10 pm. As soon as we landed, Ol opened his booking.com app and I looked at Trip Advisor and Priceline. These apps have helped to save us thousands of dollars on lodging. We have found that the more last minute the booking, the better the price. The hotels know that they are unlikely to sell these rooms, so hence the great discount. I’m a travel agent and these rates beat any travel agent discounts or commissions.
Priceline, won out. We selected “name your own price” and found a four star hotel in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago. We simply choose the area, the star level of the hotel and the price. We don’t know the exact property when we book it, but we set the parameters. Imagine our surprise when we found that our hotel was on the same street we stayed on over Christmas. We loved the neighborhood, and it would help in running our errands that we were already familiar with the neighborhood.
We had one day to plan our four week trip to the Patagonia area of Chile and Argentina. We had planned on doing this in the evenings on Easter Island, but the internet was terrible. We purchased our ticket to Punta Arenas, Chile the night before our flight to Easter Island, but hadn’t booked anything else. During our 24 hour layover we also needed to do the mundane tasks of shopping and laundry.
I worked on our itinerary to the region and Ol worked on finding us a place to stay for our first night. We have learned from past experience, to only book one night in advance. If we like the hotel/hostal or area we can usually extend our stay. With our phones, tablet, and computer we can use all of our apps and compare prices. It is surprising to see the difference in rates for the same property on different apps.
Our plans would all revolve around our trip to Torres del Paine National Park. This hike is our dream destination as hikers and the reason that we have been carrying our sleeping bags and tent for the past four months! Our plan is to do the long “O” hike around the park. In order to do anything longer than a day hike we need to prebook all of our campsites to get past the various backcountry checkpoints.
We also plan to visit the places discovered and made famous by the world’s greatest explorers. The Magellan Straight, the Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Horn. We will visit penguin colonies and hike in some of the most remote and beautiful mountains in the world. We will travel the antarctic waters through fjords and see elephant seals, whales, glaciers and lakes covered with black swans and pink flamingoes.
The areas are remote and we are not sure about the internet. I know that Ol’s photos will be worth the wait. If you follow him on Instagram you can follow where we are and get a sneak peak of our upcoming posts. Thankfully, we got everything done before our flight and we even had time to sneak in a viewing of The Showman at our favorite theatre. It’s now 1 a.m. and we are off to the airport! Once again, I have to pinch myself and not to stay awake. We are on our way to Patagonia!
Thankfully, we got everything done and even had time to sneak in a viewing of The Showman at our favorite theatre. It’s 1 am and we are off to the airport! Once again, I have to pinch myself . We are on our way to Patagonia!