ATP: South American Travel Advice

[LadyDeac03]

Obviously the Pit has a bunch of world travelers and I know y'all want to share some advice!

Having done most of Europe (albeit 10 years ago), LadyDeacToy and I are considering a big trip in 2012 and were thinking about trying South America. We figured it's somewhere we're less likely to go as we get older, and since neither of us have been, we're looking into options.

One friend has highly recommended Argentina, mostly Buenos Aries with trips to the Iguazu Falls and wineries and what not.

An old co-worker hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu a couple years ago and highly recommended that as well.

We would likely be going for 7-10 days in the winter of 2012 (February?). We don't want to spend a ton, but aren't necessarily pinching pennies (however the $1500-2000 flights to B.A. did sound like a lot).

Do any of y'all have tips or advice for either of these areas or others worth exploring?

 

[Baconwfu]

$1500 to B.A is what it costs. I've flown down there 5 or 6 times and it's always $1300-$1800 it seems. It's a 10 hour, 5000 mile flight (from atlanta)
Buenos Aires is a cool city, you can see most of what you need to see in a few days though. I'd go see a real nice tango show dinner (the big auditoriums are bullshit). Take a tour by bus or hire a private tour guide, walk around the nice parts of the city. and go to a real nice dinner (food is the only thing that's especially cheap in B.A anymore) I've only been in their winter, but I know it gets hot as hell down their in their summer (our winter). As far as other touristy things, it depends on what you want to do. If you go down south into Patagonia there are some real nice resorts and stuff and it's supposed to be beautiful, but it's really out of the way and takes a while to get there (i.e. you'll be committing a lot of your vacation to Patagonia). There are excellent beach towns just south of B.A in the B.A. province. You can go to Punta Del Este in Uruguay which is supposed to be real nice (i've been through PDE, but again, only in the winter when it was dead). You also might want to check out the Mendoza region if you like wine....Argentina has great wines and they're generally pretty reasonably priced

 

[deacphan]

Don't go to Bolivia.

 

[RJKarl]

If you go to BA let me know before you leave. My friend lives there.

 

[Bubble Boy]

I've been to BA and liked it. As mentioned, 3-4 days is probably plenty of time to spend in the city. I have never been to Chile, but I have heard there are really cool places there, and they also have a nice wine region. If I went back down there, I would probably do 3 days in BA, 2 days in Santiago, and another 3-5 hitting some places in Argentina and/or Chile that are outside of those 2 cities.