Our South America sojourn was a truly incredible experience but with a trip as complex as ours was, we naturally had more than our fair share of challenges. The first came as a consequence of me booking the entire tour online. A friend had taken a tour with Condor Travel and I read many positive reviews about it online but I started to feel some trepidation the moment I had to pay a 50% deposit to lock in my booking. Once I made the full payment, my anxiety grew as I started to have paranoid thoughts. What if I got scammed by a fake travel agent? What if all my bookings were not confirmed and we would arrive at a destination with no flight or hotel reservation? What if our airport and/or hotel pick-ups didn't show up? Or what if we didn't get picked up by our confirmed tours? I didn't personally know my travel agent so if I ran into any problems, I wasn't sure I would be able to get help. In the end, I worried over nothing as our tour went like clockwork but it did add to the stress level prior to our departure.
Getting an Argentina visa was also not easy. We faced a few obstacles during our application. First, the Argentina Embassy in Manila is very strict. The first time I submitted our requirements, they were returned to us with details on what we needed to change. For instance, if a field does not apply to us, we shouldn't leave it blank nor write N/A; instead, we had to draw a line in the field, as if we were crossing it out. Also, the field for address in Argentina had to be filled with the complete address of the hotels; I initially wrote 'see attached list of hotels' since we were staying in four hotels in Argentina but I was told that we had to write the complete addresses of all hotels in the provided space. As such, we had to write in very small letters to make sure the full addresses of all our hotels would fit in the space. I also attached an itinerary of our entire tour but I was told that our itinerary had to follow a specific table format.
I also faced some scheduling challenges. Visa applicants can only submit requirements from Monday to Wednesday and only between 9AM and 12PM. Upon arriving at the embassy on a particular Wednesday to resubmit our revised requirements, I was told that they were closed due to a holiday in Argentina. That meant I had to go back again the following week. Even then, on this re-submission, I was told that the itinerary I submitted had to include our full itinerary including Peru and Brazil (and not just the Argentina segment). Thankfully, the consul said we could just bring that updated itinerary with us during our interview, which we did. The interview itself was very quick; I think it lasted only 10 minutes. We were then given instructions on how to pay for our visa fees at a nearby bank. Thankfully, our visas were approved. (I did have a back-up plan in case our visas were not approved: my mom and I could either spend more time in Peru and Brazil - both of which Filipinos can visit without a visa - or we could replace Argentina with Bolivia, which doesn't also require a visa.)
I also experienced challenges booking our flight from Buenos Aires to Lima. Our Condor Travel/Journeyou tour started in Lima and ended in Buenos Aires but since our round trips flights were from Manila to Lima and back, we needed to fly from Buenos Aires to Lima to head home. I tried booking flights through the LATAM website since that was the most reasonable flight I could find online. However, I ran into two big problems. First, I somehow booked the wrong flight. I was trying to get the one that leaves Buenos Aires at 7:50AM. For some reason, my first few attempts to make the online purchase were unsuccessful. When my purchase was finally processed, I got confirmed on the 3:49AM flight. What??? I don't know if there was a glitch in the reservation or if I accidentally clicked on the wrong schedule due to frustration because my first few purchase attempts failed. The only way for me to correct this flight schedule was to call the airline customer service. Thankfully, they had a hotline with a toll-free number that I could call for free using Google Hangouts. LATAM's customer service was very friendly, helfpul, and efficient and because the flight I wanted had the same cost as the one I mistakenly booked, they could change my flight at no additional cost.
However, I ran into a second problem. Maybe because online purchases of LATAM flights using Philippine credit cards are rare, it seemed that my purchase wasn't approved. I found out because I got an email from LATAM saying I needed to complete my payment for my reservation to be confirmed. What??? I called my credit card and I learned that the charge was still floating and that it might go through soon. Eventually, my payment did go through, but only after a week. And then I got stressed out again because I received an email sayiong that my LATAM flight reservation had already expired so I got very worried that I had just paid for flights that my mom and I couldn't take. I called LATAM again and thankfully, our 7:50AM flights from Buenos Aires to Lima were booked and confirmed. Whew!
Basilica Cathedral of Lima
All that stress came before we had left Manila. :) When we finally arrived in South America, we still ran into some challenges. First of which was how exhausting our trip was. We were there for 17 nights and in that period, we had to take 12 flights and check in 11 different times in 10 different hotels. It didn't help that we had to fly for 35 hours from Manila to Lima and back. I had never before taken as many flights and stayed in as many hotels in two and a half weeks. Needless to say, we were physically spent by the end of our trip.
My mom also ended up having a couple of bad injuries. First, she tripped in Aguas Calientes and ended up with wounds and bruises on her knees. Thankfully, she brought a full tube of Fucidin and a lot of adhesive strips as part of her medical kit. The next day, she experienced very bad back pain. We were in Cusco then and we made the mistake of deciding to walk from Palacio del Inka to Sacsayhuaman which was only 1 kilometer away. What we thought was a gradual slope turned out to be quite the uphill battle. The problem was that because my mom wasn't expecting such a steep climb, she wore boots with a bit of heel, making the long walk to Sacsayhuaman a lot more physically demanding. Later that afternoon, she started to feel pain in her lower back and it got a lot worse in the evening. Thankfully, she also brought a lot of Mefenamic acid which proved quite effective since she wouldn't feel her back pain for several hours each time she would take it. It was also lucky that her pain disappeared towards the end of our trip which was significant because it meant that she wasn't impeded by a bad back anymore when we did our mini-trekking in Perito Moreno.
I had already written about this previously but our trip to Iguassu Falls was marred by bad weather, preventing us from doing a few things like walking through the upper and lower circuits on the Argentina side and visiting the city center. We also were unable to try the boat ride that can take visitors right under the falls (that said, I'm not sure we would have tried it even if the weather was good because we were there during winter so it was quite cold.)
The winter weather also caused my knuckles to bleed. I think the skin on my hands started to get raw in Iguazu because my hands were exposed to the cold and the rain. I did have gloves but it was difficult to take photos with gloves on so I rarely used them. Things continued to get colder after that. The temperature in Buenos Aires was around 10 degrees Celsius and it was close to zero in El Calafate. By then, my hands were so dry that the skin on my knuckles broke, causing them to bleed. My minor wounds were worth it though because I do love a lot of the photos I took.
The maximum weight limit of our check-in luggage from Buenos Aires to El Calafate also made things difficult. All our other flights within South America were on LATAM and they allowed up to 23 kilos of check-in luggage. However, our flights from Buenos to El Calafate and back were on Aerolineas Argentina which allowed only 15 kilos of check-in luggage. This meant that we needed to pack heavier stuff in our carry-on bags. We also had to repack and reweigh our check-in luggage multiple times to make full use of the maximum allowable weight.
I also had the misfortune of losing my Ipod. I was listening to it during our flight from Lima to Rio de Janeiro but when I was sorting my stuff out at our hotel in Rio that evening, I couldn't find my Ipod anymore. I figure I must have left it at the immigration counter in Rio; I think I had it in my hand after getting off the plane and my guess is that I absentmindedly placed it on the immigration counter as I was being interviewed and I accidentally left it there after my passport was stamped. (I have since purchased a new Ipod Touch despite it being quite expensive because I need to have my music...)
It was pretty exhausting just trying to visualize and write about all these challenges we experienced. :) That said, our trip was still heavily positive and absolutely worth it. (Of course, if we could do this trip all over again, I'd make sure we take a taxi from our hotel to Sacsayhuaman and back down to prevent injury.)
Next: Condor Travel, Journeyou, and Going on a Tour versus DIY
Machu Picchu
Getting an Argentina visa was also not easy. We faced a few obstacles during our application. First, the Argentina Embassy in Manila is very strict. The first time I submitted our requirements, they were returned to us with details on what we needed to change. For instance, if a field does not apply to us, we shouldn't leave it blank nor write N/A; instead, we had to draw a line in the field, as if we were crossing it out. Also, the field for address in Argentina had to be filled with the complete address of the hotels; I initially wrote 'see attached list of hotels' since we were staying in four hotels in Argentina but I was told that we had to write the complete addresses of all hotels in the provided space. As such, we had to write in very small letters to make sure the full addresses of all our hotels would fit in the space. I also attached an itinerary of our entire tour but I was told that our itinerary had to follow a specific table format.
Caminito Street in La Boca, Buenos Aires
I also faced some scheduling challenges. Visa applicants can only submit requirements from Monday to Wednesday and only between 9AM and 12PM. Upon arriving at the embassy on a particular Wednesday to resubmit our revised requirements, I was told that they were closed due to a holiday in Argentina. That meant I had to go back again the following week. Even then, on this re-submission, I was told that the itinerary I submitted had to include our full itinerary including Peru and Brazil (and not just the Argentina segment). Thankfully, the consul said we could just bring that updated itinerary with us during our interview, which we did. The interview itself was very quick; I think it lasted only 10 minutes. We were then given instructions on how to pay for our visa fees at a nearby bank. Thankfully, our visas were approved. (I did have a back-up plan in case our visas were not approved: my mom and I could either spend more time in Peru and Brazil - both of which Filipinos can visit without a visa - or we could replace Argentina with Bolivia, which doesn't also require a visa.)
La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires
I also experienced challenges booking our flight from Buenos Aires to Lima. Our Condor Travel/Journeyou tour started in Lima and ended in Buenos Aires but since our round trips flights were from Manila to Lima and back, we needed to fly from Buenos Aires to Lima to head home. I tried booking flights through the LATAM website since that was the most reasonable flight I could find online. However, I ran into two big problems. First, I somehow booked the wrong flight. I was trying to get the one that leaves Buenos Aires at 7:50AM. For some reason, my first few attempts to make the online purchase were unsuccessful. When my purchase was finally processed, I got confirmed on the 3:49AM flight. What??? I don't know if there was a glitch in the reservation or if I accidentally clicked on the wrong schedule due to frustration because my first few purchase attempts failed. The only way for me to correct this flight schedule was to call the airline customer service. Thankfully, they had a hotline with a toll-free number that I could call for free using Google Hangouts. LATAM's customer service was very friendly, helfpul, and efficient and because the flight I wanted had the same cost as the one I mistakenly booked, they could change my flight at no additional cost.
However, I ran into a second problem. Maybe because online purchases of LATAM flights using Philippine credit cards are rare, it seemed that my purchase wasn't approved. I found out because I got an email from LATAM saying I needed to complete my payment for my reservation to be confirmed. What??? I called my credit card and I learned that the charge was still floating and that it might go through soon. Eventually, my payment did go through, but only after a week. And then I got stressed out again because I received an email sayiong that my LATAM flight reservation had already expired so I got very worried that I had just paid for flights that my mom and I couldn't take. I called LATAM again and thankfully, our 7:50AM flights from Buenos Aires to Lima were booked and confirmed. Whew!
All that stress came before we had left Manila. :) When we finally arrived in South America, we still ran into some challenges. First of which was how exhausting our trip was. We were there for 17 nights and in that period, we had to take 12 flights and check in 11 different times in 10 different hotels. It didn't help that we had to fly for 35 hours from Manila to Lima and back. I had never before taken as many flights and stayed in as many hotels in two and a half weeks. Needless to say, we were physically spent by the end of our trip.
Inkaterra Hacienda Urumbamba, our hotel for one night in the Sacred Valley
My mom also ended up having a couple of bad injuries. First, she tripped in Aguas Calientes and ended up with wounds and bruises on her knees. Thankfully, she brought a full tube of Fucidin and a lot of adhesive strips as part of her medical kit. The next day, she experienced very bad back pain. We were in Cusco then and we made the mistake of deciding to walk from Palacio del Inka to Sacsayhuaman which was only 1 kilometer away. What we thought was a gradual slope turned out to be quite the uphill battle. The problem was that because my mom wasn't expecting such a steep climb, she wore boots with a bit of heel, making the long walk to Sacsayhuaman a lot more physically demanding. Later that afternoon, she started to feel pain in her lower back and it got a lot worse in the evening. Thankfully, she also brought a lot of Mefenamic acid which proved quite effective since she wouldn't feel her back pain for several hours each time she would take it. It was also lucky that her pain disappeared towards the end of our trip which was significant because it meant that she wasn't impeded by a bad back anymore when we did our mini-trekking in Perito Moreno.
Mini-trekking on Perito Moreno Glacier
I had already written about this previously but our trip to Iguassu Falls was marred by bad weather, preventing us from doing a few things like walking through the upper and lower circuits on the Argentina side and visiting the city center. We also were unable to try the boat ride that can take visitors right under the falls (that said, I'm not sure we would have tried it even if the weather was good because we were there during winter so it was quite cold.)
Iguazu Falls
The winter weather also caused my knuckles to bleed. I think the skin on my hands started to get raw in Iguazu because my hands were exposed to the cold and the rain. I did have gloves but it was difficult to take photos with gloves on so I rarely used them. Things continued to get colder after that. The temperature in Buenos Aires was around 10 degrees Celsius and it was close to zero in El Calafate. By then, my hands were so dry that the skin on my knuckles broke, causing them to bleed. My minor wounds were worth it though because I do love a lot of the photos I took.
My bleeding knuckles and the very dry skin on my hands
The maximum weight limit of our check-in luggage from Buenos Aires to El Calafate also made things difficult. All our other flights within South America were on LATAM and they allowed up to 23 kilos of check-in luggage. However, our flights from Buenos to El Calafate and back were on Aerolineas Argentina which allowed only 15 kilos of check-in luggage. This meant that we needed to pack heavier stuff in our carry-on bags. We also had to repack and reweigh our check-in luggage multiple times to make full use of the maximum allowable weight.
Perito Moreno Glacier
I also had the misfortune of losing my Ipod. I was listening to it during our flight from Lima to Rio de Janeiro but when I was sorting my stuff out at our hotel in Rio that evening, I couldn't find my Ipod anymore. I figure I must have left it at the immigration counter in Rio; I think I had it in my hand after getting off the plane and my guess is that I absentmindedly placed it on the immigration counter as I was being interviewed and I accidentally left it there after my passport was stamped. (I have since purchased a new Ipod Touch despite it being quite expensive because I need to have my music...)
View of Rio de Janeiro from Sugarloaf Mountain
It was pretty exhausting just trying to visualize and write about all these challenges we experienced. :) That said, our trip was still heavily positive and absolutely worth it. (Of course, if we could do this trip all over again, I'd make sure we take a taxi from our hotel to Sacsayhuaman and back down to prevent injury.)
Next: Condor Travel, Journeyou, and Going on a Tour versus DIY
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