We mooched around for 3 weeks for our honeymoon over Christmas and New year nearly 2 years ago. I can only speak for Chilie and Argentina, and mainly Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego at that. (But a friend of ours was out there at the same time This is his blog[/url])
We found flights to be expensive and full – we, the Honeymooners, had to beg for seats together on the flight to Santiago! (Never mind upgrades)!
We spent only a day and night in Santiago, before heading down to Punta Arenas and then up to the Torres del Paine national park for a few days over Christmas. We stayed at a place called Ecocamp, think big tents and communal dining, but with 5* prices. Couldn’t fault it though, fantastic food, guides, scenery etc.
Torres del Paine
We then moved on to
perito moreno glacier (the one that breaks off into the lake)
This bit was done by Bus, National Express could learn a bit from the Argentines on how to make a comfy coach.
The town we stayed at nearby was OK for a night, unfortunately we had 3 there due to New Year.
Glacier.
We did this and had a great time walking around with the owner and his dog – Juha (previous dog called Colin – wonder what sport he followed)! It was interesting for us learning about farming in the area, my wife is a farmers daughter, and I work in the meat industry, but I think that most of the other visitors were bored, so pick carefully.
From there we headed on to Ushuaia for a night before going on a little 3 night cruise around Tiera del Feugo. Cruising isn’t something we’d normally do, but this was fantastic, I could probably give the STW hamsters an overload with pictures, suffice to say the scenery was awesome. On this cruise there are various oportunities to get off the boat onto little Zodiac thingies, one chance was meant to be Cape Horn Island, but it was too rough.
Boat
A later trip was to see some Magellan Penguins, smelly little Buggers they are!
Smelly
This had left us in Punta Arenas again, so another flight to Santiago for one night before heading to Buenos Aires for 4 nights. We both loved BA, though we went from wearing down jackets and full waterproofs to shorts and t shirts and seeking out air conditioning!
I don’t think we had a single bad meal in 3 weeks, wine was excellent, people very friendly, and a suprising amount of English spoken,though a smattering of Spanish is useful.
Obviously I can’t speak for Peru, Bolivia etc, but we’re both dying to return, it’s just such a big place – where to go next?
As we were busy trying to sort our wedding, we got a travel agent to book it all for us, but you could do everything we did independently no bother. (Still, shameless plug for travel agent[/url])
Cheers, Ben.