Has anyone had any experience with an Argentinian tour company named Exploration Journeys. We've been corresponding with them and are considering booking a trip for this fall but have some reservation about using an out of country tour operator.

Thank you for any help.

I have a similar question about a tour company called 1stclass Argentina. Anyone have any experience with them? RagtopGirl...any luck finding reviews on tour companies anywhere on the internet??? Thanks. SWR

RagtopGirl:

My wife and I spent 9 weeks in Argentina and Chile year before last.

Other than our air to and from, all else was arranged by Argentina Escapes in Buenos Aires via e-mail from Canada.

Mercedes at Argentina Escapes was great. She did a bang up job and we were 95% satisfied. Best we have experienced yet.

Our Canadian agent knew very little about south america and had poor contacts.

I had read up on our destination[s] and presented all my ideas to Mercedes. She replied with several suggested changes which we accepted. One was a requested few days in Puerto Montt. Mercedes recommended Puerto Varas. We took her advice. Once there, it was like night and day. Without question, Puerto Varas was much superior while Puerto Montt and was a short distance away from Montt.

In my opinion, there is nothing like getting local advice if one is lucky enough to finde a GOOD agent.

Mercedes was very good and I look forward to using her again in the future.

It is typical for agents to require full payment in advance and I was quite concerned about that. I checked out the company to be more comfortable and that turned out fine so I sent off my money.

While I do not know about the firms in question on this thread, I do know that Argentina Escapes is a good firm and that Mercedes there did a great job for me.

The other 5% was not good at all. Please understand that our trip was from Punta Arenas, southern tip of Chile to Santiago in Chile to Mendoza, to San Juan to Buenos Aires in Argentina. Mercedes in Buenos Aires must work with some local agents in these far flung places. Of course she can not have control on how good those other agents are. Even with her past experience, changes in personelle and management go on all the time. While we had minor irritation in a few places, the agent in Mendoza was terrible.

We let Mercedes know exactly what our complaints were and I am positive that she will never use them again.

I do not expect to find 100% perfection so all in all we were very pleased with the many accommodations, tours, internal travel and special events that she arranged for us.

I mention this 5% in order to give you the whole picture.

Hope this is of help.

Woodie

Update on Exploration Journeys - we just returned from the trip booked with them and it was great. Everything was done very professionally - and it was a complicated trip with five cities in 13 days ! This was not a group trip, but private tours for two. I would highly recommend dealing with David and Fred - top notch service and would book with them again. www.explorationjourneys.com

If anyone is ever looking for a US based travel agent who knows South America (especially Brazil, but he has been great towork with for our Argentina trip as well), contact Edson Alessi at Fredson Travel. You can e-mail him at [email protected]. Their website is: www.fredson.com.