We have spent a good bit of time in the last week planning our first South American inland trip--to Chile. Right now (mid summer in Chile) is the best time to be going, so we wanted to launch off from Ecuador almost as soon as we arrive.
We finally got our tickets booked for certain critical legs of the trip:
1. Guayaquil, Ecuador to Santiago, Chile - March 10 - via air (we'll take a bus from Bahia de Caraquez to Guayaquil). LAN Chile about $275 per person, booked through Costamar Travel in Lima Peru. We plan to hang out in Santiago for a week and do some local sightseeing. We fly out of Guayaquil at 11:40pm and into Santiago about 6am on the 11th.
2. Santiago to Punta Arenas, Chile - March 17 - via air. Sky Airlines at $112 per person, booked through Costamar Travel in Lima Peru.
3. Navimag Ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt (a 5 night 4 day trip thru the Chilean fiords) - April 7-11 for $435 per person.
4. Flight back from Santiago to Lima, again on LAN Chile, on May 2. Also booked through Costamar for about $250 per person (#1 and #4 booked together as a multistop gave us better rate than 2 one-way tickets).
From Lima, we plan to take a Spirit Airlines flight back to Ft. Lauderdale (and then another flight on to San Diego) for Dave's son's wedding on May 9.
This plan gives us about 3 weeks in Patagonia, to hike Torres del Paine and to see Ushaia and Puerto Williams (right next to Cape Horn). Then we'll start working our way back north towards Santiago.
The rest of the trip, we'll take buses and local transportation, and 'wing it'.
We looked at doing a 10 day cruise to Antarctica from down there, but it's still WAY too expensive--the cheapest cabins start at about $5,000 pp.
Any of our friends interested in coming along? Spirit Airlines flies out of Ft. Lauderdale to Lima Peru pretty inexpensively.
You can download a free 'getting started with your Chile trip' guide from Lonely Planet.
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