Nine Perfect Days in Patagonia...Day 1
Let's get this out in the open.
I LOVE South America.
I love it so much that I'm worried that my emotional response to this country might be strongly swayed by the availability of bread and alfajores. Because, hell yeah alfajores:
Alfajores are a traditional Argentinian shortbread type cookie with a dulce de leche filling. I am almost a connoisseur simply based on quantity consumed. If you fly to South America you will be in the LAND of alfajores. This picture was taken in just some random ass souvenir shop. This is how important the alfajore is. They will block your access to soda with them so fast, your head will spin.
I could literally write a book of sonnets about the alfajore, so let me stop myself now and talk more about the actual countries and places to go and all that.
So...Nine Days in Patagonia. Before you get your panties in a twist, you could do Patagonia for SO MUCH LONGER. I am just going to show you how you COULD do it in a little over a week, and give you options for staying a couple days longer, here or there.
Patagonia covers both Chile and Argentina at the very bottom of South America. From the US, you will probably fly into Chile (Santiago) or Argentina (Buenos Aires). All things being equal (price, schedule), I think you should choose Buenos Aires. Why? Because BA is the bomb and I want to start you off on the right foot. As it is in the Southern Hemisphere, Patagonia follows the opposite seasons from those of us in Northern America. So, summer is roughly November to early March. This is also the peak season, so just keep that in mind when booking and you will see in the posts to come that you really need to book EARLY if you want to do a trip like ours. We ended up traveling at the end of February and I would say we had great weather, but most things were pretty booked. In the future I would push my time frame out to March if I could.
Here is where I'm going to hit you with some logistical realities that will make you very slightly annoyed:
So, our first day in South America, we landed in Buenos Aires. We had pre-booked a shuttle through our hotel for transport to the city and I'm glad I did this because once we passed through customs into the main terminal I felt like Maximus Decimus Meridius battling the barbarian horde.
Our shuttle took us to the Tango de Mayo hotel in Montserrat and it was amazing. Almost too good for us, amazing. Like...Jorge looked at me suspiciously when we got our room because he thought I blew the budget, amazing. One thing that wasn't amazing (unless you want to be out partying) was Mr. Boombastic on the microphone at 2 AM calling out tangos. I kind of thought it was funny, but if this is going to upset you maybe look elsewhere. P.S. It wasn't actually Mr. Lova Lova himself, Shaggy.
For us, almost without fail, no matter the city, one day is enough. There have been a couple trips where I have booked us to stay in the city for 2 days and we're usually more than ready to go - it's just not our thing. I think this has been the first trip we've taken where we immediately thought - shoot, we need one more full day here. So, for your perfect week-ish in Patagonia, I would spend your day of arrival as well as the next FULL day in Buenos Aires, if you can. Lets call it day 0 and day 1, shall we?
However, if you only have time for one day in BA, you can get a lot in.
In one day, we were able to:
Wander the San Telmo Flea Market and have amazing coffee.
Find our way in the middle of a protest.
Eat the best churrasco at a local place frequented by priests and cops.
And finally, lay in bed listening to the police answer a noise ordinance complaint at our hotel.
I LOVE South America.
I love it so much that I'm worried that my emotional response to this country might be strongly swayed by the availability of bread and alfajores. Because, hell yeah alfajores:
Alfajores are a traditional Argentinian shortbread type cookie with a dulce de leche filling. I am almost a connoisseur simply based on quantity consumed. If you fly to South America you will be in the LAND of alfajores. This picture was taken in just some random ass souvenir shop. This is how important the alfajore is. They will block your access to soda with them so fast, your head will spin.
I could literally write a book of sonnets about the alfajore, so let me stop myself now and talk more about the actual countries and places to go and all that.
So...Nine Days in Patagonia. Before you get your panties in a twist, you could do Patagonia for SO MUCH LONGER. I am just going to show you how you COULD do it in a little over a week, and give you options for staying a couple days longer, here or there.
Patagonia covers both Chile and Argentina at the very bottom of South America. From the US, you will probably fly into Chile (Santiago) or Argentina (Buenos Aires). All things being equal (price, schedule), I think you should choose Buenos Aires. Why? Because BA is the bomb and I want to start you off on the right foot. As it is in the Southern Hemisphere, Patagonia follows the opposite seasons from those of us in Northern America. So, summer is roughly November to early March. This is also the peak season, so just keep that in mind when booking and you will see in the posts to come that you really need to book EARLY if you want to do a trip like ours. We ended up traveling at the end of February and I would say we had great weather, but most things were pretty booked. In the future I would push my time frame out to March if I could.
Here is where I'm going to hit you with some logistical realities that will make you very slightly annoyed:
- It is not financially viable to do a one way rental car drop off, unless a $2,000 one way fee sounds reasonable to you.
- It is not the easiest thing in the world to cross the border between Chile and Argentina (it's not the hardest thing either).
- You're going to have to fly kind of a lot.
But those things aside, everything is super easy, I promise.
So, our first day in South America, we landed in Buenos Aires. We had pre-booked a shuttle through our hotel for transport to the city and I'm glad I did this because once we passed through customs into the main terminal I felt like Maximus Decimus Meridius battling the barbarian horde.
Our shuttle took us to the Tango de Mayo hotel in Montserrat and it was amazing. Almost too good for us, amazing. Like...Jorge looked at me suspiciously when we got our room because he thought I blew the budget, amazing. One thing that wasn't amazing (unless you want to be out partying) was Mr. Boombastic on the microphone at 2 AM calling out tangos. I kind of thought it was funny, but if this is going to upset you maybe look elsewhere. P.S. It wasn't actually Mr. Lova Lova himself, Shaggy.
For us, almost without fail, no matter the city, one day is enough. There have been a couple trips where I have booked us to stay in the city for 2 days and we're usually more than ready to go - it's just not our thing. I think this has been the first trip we've taken where we immediately thought - shoot, we need one more full day here. So, for your perfect week-ish in Patagonia, I would spend your day of arrival as well as the next FULL day in Buenos Aires, if you can. Lets call it day 0 and day 1, shall we?
However, if you only have time for one day in BA, you can get a lot in.
In one day, we were able to:
Illegally change US dollars into Argentinian Pesos. I can't even get into this without this post being 100 pages long, but YES we changed money in a weird back alley shop and YES it was legal tender and YES we were nervous and YES we were both kind of sweating about it. I feel like the "rules" for this are always changing, so just do some more up to date research on this before you go.
Walk all along the water at Retiro and Puerto Madero.
Wander the San Telmo Flea Market and have amazing coffee.
Find our way in the middle of a protest.
Eat the best churrasco at a local place frequented by priests and cops.
And finally, lay in bed listening to the police answer a noise ordinance complaint at our hotel.
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