Amazing Family Patagonia Trip
Patagonia
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Oct 5 - Oct 12, 2024
Erin was so great to work with in planning. She listened to our requests and made recommendations and adjustments/tweaks along the way. We had an unfortunate snag with one booking a few days before it was scheduled and Erin took care of the last minute change to ensure we could still see penguins in Ushuaia. Cami was an amazing guide on our private tour of Torres del Paine, which was easily our favorite part of our trip!
Activity Reviews
We learned a lot from our tour guide, Lucas; however, we were expecting to do more hiking and this was more of a guided tour. We did hike for maybe 30 minutes to a lookout, but the rest was being driven from location to location for pictures. It was a packed 18 person van and we were the last pick-up, so my husband didn't have a seat with a window and missed most of the scenery while were were in the van.
Estancia Laguna Sofia was absolutely stunning and being able to view the laguna and beautiful ranch from horseback was truly an experience the family will never forget. The staff was great with the kids and tailored to our riding levels (none to very little).
While the premium class was definitely a treat yourself experience, I'm so glad we did it. We ended up having entire car to ourselves and the time of our train was noon, so having lunch on the train was perfect after a morning in the national park. We also learned a lot during the ride using the provided earphones.
This was our favorite activity on the trip! The private tour is now the way we will book on future trips. Cami was an AMAZING guide, shared tons of information throughout the day, and was great with the kids. We did two longer hikes that ended with beautiful/picturesque views. In hindsight, I wish we stayed longer (more days) in Torres del Paine.
On the boat tour, we got super close to the glacier, which was a very cool experience. The walking tour was on our own, which we liked.
Our original itinerary had this included with a trip to the boat trip to the penguins, so this wasn't what we originally planned for (so please take my review with a grain of salt). Our guide was knowledgable and shared a lot of info, but we had two other individuals with us, cramped into a car, so the drive was uncomfortable. We would have enjoyed this more as a private tour where we were on our own timeline and had more space in the car. It also didn't help that this was after a full 12 hour day the day before (again due to an unexpected, last minute change). The hike to and from the waterfall was only about 30 minutes total, so not as much hiking as we were expecting. The food was delicious, but due to it being an Argentine holiday, we had to wait almost an hour to be seated, which extended the day longer than planned.
Seeing the sea lions, elephant seal, and penguins was truly an experience!
We didn't have any specific questions, so having someone walk through the itinerary we were already provided and had read through was not the best use of time.