When things don't go quite as you would have wanted

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R : We have reached something of an impass. I have always wanted to go to Patagonia - it was a "must" for our trip, and had been since day one. Our plan from Buenos Aires was to head south to Patagonia and in specific see the glaciers and Torres del Paine national park in Chile. But it wasn't to be. The next blog is more about the frustrations we have been feeling at this point in the trip. In no way do we forget how lucky we are to be able to do this trip, but at the same rate, it becomes your life, and when things don't go to plan, the worries and frustrations feel the same as any impass you might find at work or at home.

It hasn't helped that both of us seem to have had some sort of stomach bug. For Cate, it is still hanging around and we have had to resort to some Uruguayan antibiotics. It's also been 35c most days so our tethers have been bit wearing a bit thin. We did however, have a nice AirBnB in Buenos Aires which had great wifi and air conditioning, so that made it easier to plan.

Finding acceptable flights has been hard. There are many flight comparison sites out there like Skyscanner, that tell you what price flights are on different days. Except those prices aren't real. They are often not "live" and when they are, they are with dodgy companies that you wouldn't trust with your credit card number. Often we would look at one flight for say, £100pp, you click through to the next page and it's actually £270pp on Expedia, Netflights, Ebookers etc. We weren't particularly fussed if we went south to north, or north to south, just so long as we made our flight on 8th March to New Zealand from Santiago. In fact, having too much choice made it harder to keep the plan together. The two major players are LAN airlines and Aerolineas Argentinas. On forums we have seen the phrase "Fly LAN or take the bus". Turns out there is a reason for that.

As we pieced together a plan, taking into account the distance to fly south requires a 2-4 hour flight and a bus would take several days, we painstakingly searched flights to match our wish list in any order. As we landed on a plan that involved less than a thousand pounds worth of return flights, we got booking. As we struggled with rampant flight price increases, the first flight we booked, from the southern tip of Chile to Mendoza, a small wine making town in Argentina, close to Santiago, where we thought we might like to go, but actually bypassed it the first time, was cheaper than flying to Santiago. This makes no sense, as we had to have a 6 hour connection there at 3am for the ticket to work. We figured we could probably just get away with not taking the second flight. That eventually went through - non-refundable. Only after Halifax blocked my credit card for the first time this trip and I had to speak to them in the UK before continuing. Then on to the flight with Aerolineas Argentinas - Expedia refused to book it for us. Ebookers too. Both are now holding funds on my debit card which I'm hoping to get back. Last minute.com did allow us to do it. But shortly afterwards, sent us an email saying due to technical issues, they couldn't provide the service. Great. So now we are stuck with a non-refundable onward service that we can't get to!

We also looked at bus connections and other ways of getting about, but everything was outside of our budget, or was an unacceptable time on a bus - 3 days, anyone?

We went to the Aerolineas office in Buenos Aires. There the price was even more than it was on the Internet. We decided to take stock and ended up in TGI Fridays licking our wounds, and some delicious ribs! We decided to check on accomodation in El Calafate - the jumping off town we would have to fly to. There was none in town for less than £120 per night - not really compatible with a traveller's budget. We tried Airbnb to no avail. It was then we knew it was doomed. It would be too expensive for us to travel there, let alone book on to the 3 day ferry journey through the Patagonian fjords that we wanted to do - 450 USD per person for a shared room - or the accomodation needed in the Torres del Paine national park - reffugios (dorms) at a hefty 70 GBP per night per person, shared room, and mainly fully booked already. That's before transport to the park.

Meanwhile our search for accomodation in Bariloche (in the Argentine Lake District) was turning out just as fruitless. One by one we reserved Airbnbs only to have them cancel on us minutes later - turns out they are all on more than one booking site. Eventually we got one to accept who spoke little English. Fingers crossed. Standard hostels in town were full, leaving us only options that were 13km out of town. Hotels again were too expensive.

So now we have a hole in our plans. We have booked to go to Bariloche and then from there... Who knows? We aim to be in Santiago before my birthday (5th March) so that we can have a relaxing time there. But until then, it's back to the drawing board, and that leaves us roughly two weeks. Two weeks that we aren't doing what we wanted to do.

When you write it down, it doesn't seem half as irritating as it does when you are doing it. Overall, we must have spent at least 3 hours a day trying to make this work for the last week. Add that to other frustrations we had (illness, heat, things being closed, or not doing what they're supposed to - an Argentine speciality) and it was quite a frustrating week. And in truth, now the dust has settled we have made peace with it a bit. But that doesn't stop the disappointment we feel at one of the most major components of our trip being pulled from underneath us. Maybe we should have planned ahead - but where's the fun in that? We considered joining an organised tour, but they were even more money.

Whinge over..

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Photos

Our travel office
Aka our Buenos Aires airbnb