Patagonia Trip Suggestions Please
 

My wife and I are booked at Explora Patagonia for five days in February to do some hiking in Torres del Paine National Park. We want to spend an additional week or so in the general area seeing the most interesting/beautiful sites. We will most likely fiy into Punta Arenas via Santiago, Chile but have not booked our flights yet. We have an option to depart via El Calafate but that might be harder to get back to the States from. We are also looking a spending a couple days in Santiago. finally I have seen a half-day ferry trip to Isla Magdalena from Punta Arenas to see the penguins that looks interesting. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

You should book your flights as soon as possible as February is peak high season. Prices just keep rising as the dates you want approach.

Unless you want to visit other places in Argentina it is better if you visit El Calafate and El Chalten by land from Chile and return the same way. A week would be a good time frame to do that.

Have a look at the penguin tour dates on the Comapa website. It is worth doing.

Note that flights can go to Punta Arenas or Puerto Natales (Latam) which is closer to Torres del Paine. The flights to PN are not every day and I think Punta Arenas is worth a stopover for the penguins and to see a very historic city. I know that the Explora offers transfers and I am not sure if you are going to use those or public transport. It is 3 hours from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales and another 2 hours or so to an entrance to the park, without considering time travelling inside the park. Just to put distances into perspective for you.

First-draft rough schedule:
day 1 Fly Miami to Santiago
2 Santiago
3 Santiago
4 Fly Santiago to Punta Arenas
5 Punta Arenas
6 Punta Arenas
7 Drive Punta Arenas to explora Patagonia
8 explora Patagonia
9 explora Patagonia
10 explora Patagonia
11 explora Patagonia
12 Drive explora Patagonia to El Calafate
13 El Calafate
14 Fly El Calafate to Buenos Aires
15 Buenos Aires
16 Buenos Aires
17 Fly Buenos Aires to Miami

Huentetu - Thank you very much for your feedback. Definitely agree regarding the flights. Hope to finalize our schedule in the next day or two. I will also check out PN option. We will be using Explora tranfers.

I think your itinerary looks good but maybe too many nights in Santiago. Look into going to Valpo as well.