Epic 2024 Adventure: South America, Patagonia, and ANTARCTICA

*Written by Whitney*

We are starting 2024 off with a bang by taking an epic bucket list trip to South America, Patagonia, and Antarctica!

If you’ve been keeping up with our travels, you may be aware that we said our Summer 2023 Honeymoon trip to Europe, after our wedding in June, would likely be our “last long international trip” before “settling down” and starting a family. Well, as you can see, that did not end up being the case — ha!

We’ve been saying for the last year or so that we were going to be settling down soon and wouldn’t be doing as many big international adventures. But there always seems to be “one more trip” we want to take.

Truly though, while there are always more places in the world we want to see, Patagonia has been a big one on our list that we had to reschedule from our cancelled Latin America trip in 2020. We had been considering finding a way to squeeze this in before we “settle down” but did not have any solid plans. A more distant goal for “someday” was also to visit Antarctica.

Well, just as we were finishing up our honeymoon trip last summer (by the way, I still plan to write a full recap on this, life just got very busy the last few months and it hasn’t happened yet- but it’s coming!) — we got to talking to some of our Travel PT friends (another couple who are also both traveling physical therapists) about places we still wanted to visit. We mentioned Patagonia, and they said they had recently been looking into Patagonia as well, and wanted to take a cruise down to Antarctica while they were there. So, next thing you know, we got to planning a trip together for January 2024 to these two bucket list destinations!

These friends are also on a similar life path to us, considering starting a family soon. So we figured this would be a great opportunity to do this trip together before all of our lives may be changing very soon!

Planning This Trip

We have never taken an international trip with friends before, so this was a whole new experience for us. But, we actually did meet up with these same friends during our 2022 Around the World Trip, while they were also traveling in Australia, and we were able to cross paths and share an Airbnb for a few days. Additionally, this summer, we went with them to our Final US National Park (Isle Royale in Michigan) staying overnight for a couple nights together. Plus we have each visited one another’s houses in our respective home states before. So, of any of our friends, we knew that we get along very well and have a similar travel style to them, so we figured that they would be a great fit to take a big trip like this with!

Fortunately for us, they are also great planners, so this trip really came together very quickly. What started off as an idea while we were together at the national park in August, turned into booking the first leg of the trip just a few days later, and having the entire trip fully booked within about a month or so! This is actually the only long international trip we have ever taken where we had the trip fully booked prior to leaving! In the past we usually had some of our trip booked before leaving, but never the whole thing. But due to the popularity of the locations we are visiting on this trip (and the limited seasonality), it was more important than ever to book in advance for this trip.

We have been hesitant on recent trips to book too far in advance in case of cancellations, especially after having to cancel our whole 2020 trip. But sometimes you have to take the risk and do your best to rely on cancellation policies, and last resort, travel insurance.

If you are unfamiliar with world geography, you could be wondering why we are going to this part of the world in January. Well, since it is in the Southern Hemisphere, keep in mind that this is their summer. So it’s actually the best and most popular time to visit, particularly Patagonia and Antarctica. This makes booking for this time of year very competitive and also pricey. But it’s worth it to go when the weather is the most favorable!

Trip Itinerary

In total, this trip is going to be about 6 weeks, which is actually on the shorter side for us since a lot of our trips are 2-3 months, with the longest ones having been 4 and 5 months. We are excited about it though because sometimes the longer trips can get exhausting and we become a little jaded by the end. We hope by keeping this one to 6 weeks we will be able to enjoy all of it without being “over it” by the end. 5 of the weeks will be spent with our friends, and the last week will be on our own.

Here is an overview of everywhere we are going on this trip:

• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• 16-day cruise to Antarctica including:
  • Montevideo, Uruguay
  • Falkland Islands
  • Antarctic Peninsula
  • Cape Horn
  • Ushuaia, Argentina
  • Punta Arenas, Chile
• Santiago, Chile
• Patagonia (Chile/Argentina)
  • Puerto Natales, Chile
  • Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile
  • El Calafate, Argentina
  • El Chalten, Argentina
  • Glaciers National Park, Argentina
• Ecuador
  • Quito
  • Cloud Forest

What We’ll Be Doing This Trip

This trip has three main parts: the cruise to Antarctica, hiking in Patagonia, and exploring Ecuador.

The cruise starts in Buenos Aires and ends in Santiago, so we will be visiting each of those cities on either end of the cruise. There are also a couple of city stops on the trip. But what we are most excited about is seeing the arctic wildlife, particularly penguins and whales, on the cruise! We will get up close and personal with penguins in the Falkland Islands and possibly in Ushuaia and Punta Arenas. We are also excited to see glaciers and icebergs in Antarctica from the cruise ship. These are some of the most stunning and fascinating natural features in our opinion. We’ve had the opportunity to see some of these ice features in Alaska, Canada, Norway, Switzerland and New Zealand. But Antarctica is home to 90% of the world’s ice, so we can’t wait to see what it has to offer! Unfortunately, our cruise ship does not dock in the Antarctic, so we will not get to get off the boat onto land. But, we should get to see many of the stunning Antarctic landscapes and wildlife from the ship.

After the cruise, the part of the trip we are probably the most excited about is visiting Patagonia, after wanting to visit there for several years from cancelling it on our 2020 trip. We will be visiting both the Chilean and the Argentinean sides of Patagonia.

We had considered hiking the iconic W-Trek while we are on the Chilean side. But after researching several options for this multi-day trek, we ultimately decided to do portions of the trek as day-hikes instead of doing the whole thing as a through hike. We are going to go on our own without a guide or porters. So we will move around, staying in different hostels (“refugios”) in different parts of Torres del Paine National Park, then take day hikes to different locations in the park. We will get to hike most of the W-Trek route this way and see the majority of the scenery. There are going to be many back to back 10+ mile hiking days, so it will be exhausting, but should be worth it for the epic views! We also plan to kayak at Gray Glacier lake for a unique perspective of this beautiful area.

On the Argentinean side, we will be visiting El Chaltan and El Calafate, including hiking in the Glaciers National Park. We are very excited about seeing Mount Fitz Roy and hiking on the ice at Perito Moreno Glacier! Hiking on glacier ice was definitely one of our biggest highlights when we were in Alaska in 2022. So we can’t wait to get back out on the ice in Patagonia! Additionally, our friends have never seen glaciers or icebergs before, so it’s going to be such a treat to go with them for their first time to experience these natural wonders!

We will wrap up our time with our friends after week 5 in Patagonia. They’ll be flying back to the US after Patagonia, but we decided to tack on an additional week at the end of the trip as we make our way back north toward the US. We will be visiting another place in South America where we have never been and had to cancel from our 2020 trip: Ecuador.

We are fortunate to know another fellow PT who has lived part of the year in Ecuador and part of the year in the US (where she is from) for the last several decades. She invited us to stay at the guesthouse that she owns in the Cloud Forest of Ecuador, just a couple hours outside of the capital of Ecuador. This will be such an amazing opportunity to visit this unique place. We are excited to both relax in the tranquil mountain escape, as well as explore some of the surrounding areas. Highlights of this part of the trip will include visiting coffee and chocolate farms, viewing unique species of birds, chasing waterfalls, and of course hiking. To wrap up the trip, we will spend a couple days in the capital, Quito. By chance, we will actually be in Quito just a few days before their Carnaval. We hope to be able to see and participate in some of the Carnaval celebrations while we are there.

Stay Tuned

We are very excited about this trip, with so many bucket list destinations and activities planned! We keep saying that each of our most recent international trips is our favorite that we’ve ever taken, and this could very well become our new favorite! We’ve learned over the years what type of travel we prefer, and each time we try to do a little better with planning. This trip is going to be full of outdoor adventures with many beautiful natural attractions, which is what we have enjoyed most on our prior trips (as opposed to visiting cities).

If you’d like to follow along with our adventures, we will be posting many photos and videos on our Instagram and Facebook pages. Once the trip is over, keep an eye out for updated blog posts about the trip as well! (PS still to come is a full recap of our Summer 2023 Europe trip as well!)

Have you visited any of these places before? Or are any of them on your own bucket list? Let us know in the comments! Also any recommendations you have are welcomed in the comments!