2014/01 Chile trip - Planning the trip |
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Dear All,
This is part one of the story of our vacation in Chile and the Falkland Islands, a very different trip from our usual putzing around in some form of camper. Planning began a few years ago when we had accumulated enough frequent flier miles on United Airlines to get somewhere in South America, but there was always something more important to do. I`d seen pictures of the amazing mountains in Chile’s Patagonia, began to read about the area`s history, and decided that any country which had a hero named Bernardo O`Higgins had to be worth a visit. So, Chile was chosen and our miles would get us to Santiago, the capital. We toyed with the idea of renting a camper there, but Chile is 3000 miles long and the bits of Chile we wanted to visit aren`t even connected by road unless we were willing to risk a detour through Argentina. This would probably be OK but all too easy for a Brit to get stuck somewhere if the political situation deteriorated.
To get to Patagonia`s Torres del Paine mountains we’d have to fly another thousand miles south to Punta Arenas and take a bus from there. Punta Arenas is also the jumping-off point for the Falklands and as we had a standing invitation from Sandie's cousin and his wife, we added the islands to our itinerary. The plan was to stay in the Torres del Paine park at the Cascada Ecocamp resort and sign up for their “wildlife safari” and then move on to do something similar in the Falklands.
Then it got really complicated, as the frequent flyer flights are only available twice a week, the Ecocamp`s hikes only happen on specific days, and flights to the Falklands are only on Saturdays. We also had to leave spare days between all the bits, just in case we were delayed somewhere. Then we tried to find interesting things to do on those spare days. The relatives helped a lot by handling the Falklands schedule for us, booking the flights and lodges on the islands that had interesting wildlife. We ended up with two weeks in Chile and two in the Falklands, with about three more days to get home. Total distance would be nearly 20000 miles.
Packing was difficult as we`d have heat in Santiago, cold and rain and wind in the Torres, and similar in the Falklands. But sorting out the money would prove to be the biggest headache. Chile mostly deals in pesos but we’d been advised to bring US dollars along too. Those we had but the company that advertised next day delivery of pesos took much longer, arriving with only a day to spare. Eventually we had a fistful of pesos, the smallest a 1000 peso note, worth about $2!
Despite our warning them in advance, our Canadian credit card company rejected the charges for our Ecocamp stay in Chile. More phone calls sorted this out but then they got excited about “unusual activity” on the card for an $8 purchase from Amazon and shut it off a few days before we left.
The Falklanders have their own pound, tied to the British pound, which they also accept. But there are no ATMs there and the island lodges we were visiting only accept pounds, dollars, and UK cheques, not credit cards . Cheques sounded safest so all we had to do was send an American cheque to my UK bank to make sure we had enough pounds in the kitty. This looked like it had worked but just before we were leaving the paperwork arrived in the mail and we saw that they’d sent our American cheque to Canada instead of the USA so it will probably bounce! We sent them another cheque, Canadian this time, and hoped it would all work out. As insurance we bought some pounds at the airport too. Sandie, our money mule, was now carrying pounds and pesos and dollars various.