http://www.loisuites.com.ar/

Be certain you are checking rates for the right Loi Suites location, since prices vary enormously. LoiSuites Arenales should be 60dollars per night double, or 70 or so for a one bedroom.

Peep: The Jungle Adventure is the name of the "package" I described - $30 Pesos for the speedboat + $40 Pesos for the 4x4 trail drive. We also added the raft trip for another $10 Pesos. You can book it easily from inside the park. There's one that leaves every 30 minutes or so beginning with the 4x4.

heleni: We used www.buenosaires-tours.com.ar to book our room at Loi Suites Arenales in BA. The Travel Agent, Isabel, knows the manager and was able to get the $60/night rate at the Arenales location.

Out of curiosity I checked the Loisuites web site for a Feb. date at either the Arenales or Esmeralda location. Both hotels show $60 a night for a standard double. The Recoleta location is the only one that charges a lot more.

Nica,

We will be visiting Torres del Paine in early March. Any recommendations on guides, lodging, etc.

Thanks!

To akengland: Torres del Paine is huge, it takes 1 hour by car from the entrance (porteria Sarmiento) to Rio Serrano. 3 hours from Puerto Natales.

Chilean Army is building a road (unpaved-ripio) that will cut the travel time to Puerto Natales to 1 hour, but this will take like 3 years.

I recommend staying inside the park. We stayed at two hosterias, one is wonderful (Rio Serrano, www.hosteriarioserrano.com), the other is much worse(Cabanas del Paine). Price is expensive (170 US$ in highest season, New year) but similar for both.

Rio Serrano is a good location, but the 3 hosterias (two already mentioned plus Tyndall) are located across the car park on the river and only hosteria Rio Serrano has a citafono (intercom) and shuttle working 24 hours that picks you up at the car park . The staff and restaurant are excellent.

Hosteria Las Torres (even more expensive)is very convenient for the Base las Torres trekking trail but very inconvenient for everything else because the last 7 kilometers are horrible (1/2 hour, ripio here is awful) so it takes you ages to get to any other place.

If you want a map before you go there (the one they give you with park pass is excellent) there are at least two: we bought in Spain a very good one called Torres del Paine trekking map Lands End .

We used a guide called Southamerican Handbook, Footprint.

Other recommendations: if you don't have a car (better a 4wd), transportation within the park is very expensive. We found rates at Hosteria Rio Serrano very competitive for all excursions/transportation. The horse excursion (cabalgata)from the hosteria is wonderful (45 US$p/p. 4 h)

Wonderful trip report, questions and answers. We are thinking of traveling to BA sometime in the next few months. I have FFlyer miles that have to be used. I have a lot of research to do! Thanks for starting me on it.

I am not the best "flyer", so wondering if small planes (prop?) are used to go from BA to the Falls?
How about BA to Patagonia/the southern most tip of BA?

Nope, no prop planes. Boeing jets all the way...the only bothersome thing about flying in Argentina is all the chickens and other farm animals in the aisles....smile ...just kidding....if you didn't know better you would swear you were on a flight from Atlanta to Dallas instead of BA to Iguazu.....

tmt: The previous poster is correct- no puddle jumpers.
Even though the planes are larger, be careful with the luggage weight. The max is 15 kilos per person. We ended up purchasing a lighter suitcase in BA after our first domestic flight. They gave us the choice of adding to our carry on or paying a fine. We added to our carry on.

I read your report of your trip, and having spent some time in El Calafate, El Chalten and at the Perito Merino Glacier, it brought back nice memories. I am thinking about visiying Iguazu Falls, which I see you visited. You mentioned that you chose not to go to the Brazilian side because of the visa charge. If you had wanted to go and been willing to pay, would you have been able to get a 1-day visa at the crossing from the Argentinian side of the falls? (I assume you are American, otherwise you wouldn't worry about the visa.) If you know, could you - or anyone else who is reading this who know - please reply to me directly? I am [email protected]. Thanks.

There are no one day visas to enter Brazil. Most taxi drivers have friends who work at the border stations and can get you across without paying the $100-plus Visa fee. I have been back and forth for the day several times without a visa, as recently as last June.

Nica:
Thanks for the info!

Neilk: Originally we were scheduled to go to the Brazilian side with hope that we wouldn't be charged the hefty Visa fee. After spending 11 hours at Igauzu Falls on the Argentine side, we didn't feel it was necessary to view it from the other side, so we canceled the border crossing. We were very happy with our experience.

Nicci--

Thank you for your excellent summary -- a real service to your fellow travelers. I am wondering if you could tell me two things: 1) when you were in Salta and the surrounding area, did you get a sense of the best time of year to go there? I'm told this is the rainy season -- was there much rain and how cold did it get around Salta at high elevations? 2) I was planning on spending 9 days in the Salta region verus the 4 days you spent. Difference is I'll go a bit south of Cafayate (to Tafi del Valle, seeing Quilmes ruins and the Parque de Menhires) and on the other end going all the way to Yavi and the Laguna de los Pozuelos which is almost in Bolivia. Did you feel like you could spend more time in the Salta-Cachi-Cafayate-Jujuy-Purmamarca region than you did?
Thanks very much for your thoughts!

Hi Nicci !

Your report of your trip to Argentina was very intersting. We are living from Montreal,Quebec to BA on March 3rd returning March 20th. We only bough our air ticket from Canada to Argentina. We plan to spent 4 days in BA than 2 days in Iguazu follow by Tucuman, Salta, Juluy, Mendoza and a few days in Uruguay (Punta Del Este).

We looked on differents internet sites about air plane tickets for traveling in the country and we find it very expensive. Even the Mercosur pass and through Aerolineas Argentinas with "coupon". How did you travel ? Have you bought your tickets from your home country ?
For air tickets, do you have a Tourism agencies in BA to recommanded ?

Thank you !

hi--I tried to find www.buenosaires-tours.com

but could not find it. Would you please repost the right URL?

Thanks!

la contessa: You need to add ".ar" to the end of the URL.

aproductofsociety: 1) We were in the region for 5 days and it rained for a few hours on the 1st day only. I think the guide book suggests the best time to go is June-October during the dry season, although it was absolutely perfect when we were there in December. The weather was not hot like most people say about Salta. It was dry and warm during the day, then cool and breezy at night. It was colder and windy at high elevations. A fleece jacket or wind breaker should to keep you warm. Our guide Angelica was a great source of information since she’s lived her entire life in the region and has worked in tourism for over 15 years. You can e-mail her directly at [email protected] and her cell phone number is 154088612

2) Nine days might not be enough time to spend in the all Northwestern areas you've mentioned. We spent 5 full days that allowed us to see the highlights, but we were rushed. I could easily spend a month or more there.

sylisca: I thought our domestic tickets were still too expensive at $200 US rt. each. For the same distance, our tickets are much less here in the USA. Plus Aerolineas charges double if you're not a resident of Argentina. Try to book on Southern Winds because they do not discriminate with price. I highly recommend a local Buenos Aires based travel agent, Isabel, at www.buenosaires-tours.com.ar. She's really helpful and honest. We used her to book part of our trip. Super service!

Nicci. I would like to thank you for your excellent report.
I do have couple of questions I hope you can answer me.
Your Trip to Salta. Did you book Everything through Angelica or you had to do your own booking per her recommendations? Is it worth to visit the vineyards and how much was it? How much was the airfare?
Sorry for bombarding you with question. We're deciding on our itinerary we only have two weeks in Argentina, and we need to decide to do either Bareloche or Salta. What would you recomend
Thank you very much :)

Hi Nicci,
I too have a question regarding your guide in Salta - how do meals/accomodations work? Did you just pay her fee (and if so what was the range?) or did you also pay for her meals and hotels? Just trying to figure out if we can afford a guide! She sounded wonderful!
Thanks-

tbez07: Yes, in Salta we did our entire booking through Angelica, our private guide. Her fee included hotels when we overnighted with her in Angastaco and Purmamarca. We paid for the Salta Hotel on our own, although she booked it for us.

Which vineyards are you asking about? We went to vineyards in Cafayate(south of Salta) and Mendoza. We only stopped in Cafayate for a few hours and spent 4 nights in the Mendoza area. There was not a fee for any vineyard we visited in Argentina. In Mendoza, it’s best to call ahead for the hours and reservation if necessary.

All of our flights in Argentina were around $200 US roundtrip from BA to anywhere.

We did not go to Bariloche, so I can not comment on it from experience. We’ve been to the lake regions of New Zealand and Switzerland which are supposed to be similar. If you take the 6AM flight from BA to Salta, you will arrive around 8:30AM and have a full day from the start.

aldafa: Our guide, Angelica, charged about $80-100 US per day depending on the location. This included simple hotels, private air conditioned car and her excellent service from 8AM to 9PM everyday. She speaks Eglish very well, has a great sense of humor and explained the historical and geographical relevance of each area visited. We paid for our own meals which were super cheap in this part of Argentina- only $10-15US total for two.

I can't say enough wonderful things about Angelica. It was my husband's birthday while we were staying in Purmamarca and I wanted to surprise him with a cake. After Angelica called around, she said there weren't any bakeries in the town, but not to worry because she knew where there was one close by. After dinner, we returned to our hotel where there was a big Happy Birthday poster on the door, balloons inside the lobby and a cake with candles sitting on the table. She refused to take any money for this and the next day I discovered that she drove over an hour each way to buy the Birthday cake for us.