2019 Dec. Santiago. Chile.

This was a long anticipated trip to South America to trek in Patagonia, which required many months of advance planning and coordination. I was referred to an UK travel agent Swoop and decided to give them a try, instead of using my previous US travel agent Latin America for Less. On hindsight, I was not too impressed with Swoop‘s attention to details nor service partners, compared to LAFL who did a wonderful job for my previous trip to Peru back in 2013. For this trip, I ended up booking all the flights myself, both international and domestic, as the domestic flights quote from the UK agent came at a substantial premium, when I googled online for the same flights. Travel time to Santiago in Chile via Sydney was only 24 hours surprisingly, but return trip from Argentina via Abu Dhabi took 36 hours.

My trip did not start well and I went through the WORST travel nightmare during my first day in Santiago. After putting down luggages in the hotel, we headed out for a walk in downtown, mindful of the hours to avoid certain areas due to ongoing civil protests that vandalised many city infrastructure. Continue Reading