Trip Overview

I am a *little* delayed writing this trip recap for our 2024 trip to Antarctica & South America (okay maybe more than a little, it’s been nearly two years, haha, but life of course has been busy since we had our baby!) But I wanted to be sure to come back and write a recap of this amazing trip and include some photos, because it was truly one of our favorite international trips we’ve ever done!

In case you missed it, I did write an overview of the trip before we went, which included the itinerary, back story about this trip, and some of the planning. Jared also wrote a (brief) summary & expense report after the trip. You can read them below:

As a quick overview, this was our “last long international trip” before settling down and starting our family. Yes, we had said that before in 2022 and 2023, ha, but this was truly our last big trip before having our baby! In fact, we actually got pregnant while on this trip, that’s how serious we were about beginning to settle down! Of course there are always going to be more places to travel, but Patagonia and Antarctica were two huge bucket list places we were excited to hit before settling down, so we made it happen!

This was a six week trip from January to February 2024. The first five weeks of the trip in Antarctica and Patagonia, we traveled with our friends Laura and Justin (a fellow Travel PT couple), which made this the first time we ever took an international trip with friends! Then the last week of the trip was on our own in Ecuador.

Here’s an overview of the itinerary:

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
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Ecuador
- Quito
- Cloud Forest

Trip Recap & Photos

Buenos Aires, Argentina

We flew out of the US on New Year’s Eve, so we were in the air when it became 2024, and we arrived January 1st! We weren’t sure about flying on New Year’s Eve but it turned out to be an awesome experience. We each got a full 4 seat middle row to ourselves because the flight was so empty which meant a were able to sleep well on the overnight flight. We met our friends in Buenos Aires, Argentina to start the trip, which is where the cruise for Antarctica left out of. We spent a couple days there to allow a buffer in case of any travel delays to ensure we wouldn’t miss the cruise. Fortunately though we didn’t have any delays at the start of the trip, and really we didn’t have any major delays or hiccups the rest of the entire trip either! This was such a relief after our 2023 Europe Honeymoon trip where we had SO many flight issues and delays!

Buenos Aires was a pretty cool city overall, but of course as we’ve talked about in the past, Jared and I aren’t really big city people in general. But it was fine for a few days! Here we made sure to eat at an Argentinian steak house (so good) and see a tango show! We also did a hop on/hop off bus tour to do some sightseeing and hit some of the popular tourist spots, like Mercado de San Telmo, Cafe Toroni and the colorful La Boca neighborhood.

One thing we found strange about Buenos Aires was the number of mosquitos! We were actually fairly concerned as our Airbnb host was adamant that we wear bug spray to prevent getting dengue fever. There were literally huge swarms of them. We were not expecting to encounter that in a big city. It seems that this was a particularly bad time for mosquitoes due to some recent rains, but I think it is an ongoing problem, so if you plan to go there be aware.

The other thing that was interesting when we visited Argentina was the historically high inflation they were experiencing with their currency (which has actually gone higher and continued into this year). Because of the massive devaluing of their currency, Argentinians were seeking out U.S. Dollars as a way to store value. So we had heard there was essentially a “black market” for acquiring U.S. Dollars, but it wasn’t really a sketchy black market, they were very open about it. They call it the “Blue Dollar.” If you exchange personally with people by giving them your Dollars in exchange for Argentinian Pesos, you could get a better rate than if you withdrew pesos from an ATM, or got them from a bank or an official exchange. So, knowing this ahead of time, we made sure to bring a decent amount of physical cash with us to exchange, whereas usually we only carry a small amount of U.S. Dollars in case of emergency, and get local currency from ATMs. It all worked out fairly well for us, but it was weird trying to manage exchanging money with locals. We first exchanged with our Airbnb host, and then we were told about a restaurant where the owner would exchange with us. Later we saw signs in local stores and restaurants that they’d offer a discount if you used U.S. Dollars, and we also heard people calling out on the street to exchange with them.

After a few days in Buenos Aires, it was time to leave for our cruise! The original cruise port in Buenos Aires had recently been damaged from a hurricane, so we had a pretty chaotic experience trying to redirect to the temporary port and board our cruise ship. We waited in some very long lines in direct sunlight for several hours, followed by a confusing process inside a building and being shuttled to the ship. But, after some headache, we finally made it on, and they even offered us an onboard credit for the inconvenience!

Cruise to Antarctica

This was a 16-night cruise, starting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, circling down the tip of South America (Cape Horn) with stops in Uruguay and the Falkland Islands, passing through the Drake Passage to see Antarctica, stopping in Patagonia, and then cruising through the Chilean Fjords to end in Santiago, Chile. We got a great deal on it at only about $2,000 per person. We booked through Cruises.com.

This was our first time cruising with Princess, previously we’d only been on Carnival, and wow was it an upgrade! We were on the Sapphire Princess which had a lot less passengers and generally it was an older crowd, so it was much less busy, less loud, and a lot more relaxing. The ship itself was awesome. We liked our cabin which we found pretty spacious and had a good amount of closet and storage space. On sea days we took advantage of trivia and some other activities, as well as the gym, pool/hot tubs, and spa. There were also “enrichment lectures” where we heard from experts about our destinations in the Falkland Islands, Patagonia, and Antarctica. The experts also gave commentary when we were in Antarctica of the wildlife and also the ice and other natural sights. We also enjoyed dining at the buffet and various restaurants. There was onboard wifi which even worked when we were in the middle of the ocean on the way to and from Antarctica surprisingly, so in our down time we got some work done and updated social media!

Montevideo, Uruguay

Uruguay was our first port on the cruise the day after leaving, as it’s just across the bay from Buenos Aires. We just did some sightseeing there via our own “walking tour” to see some of the highlights. It seemed like a nice city, but realistically we didn’t do too much as we only saw what was within walking distance (a few miles) of the port.

Stanley, Falkland Islands

This was an awesome port where we got to see thousands of penguins up close! We took a guided 4×4 tour with Estancia Excursions, which took us along a very bumpy road to Volunteer Point which is home to the world’s largest accessible King Penguin colony. We saw so many King Penguins, along with Gentoo and Magellanic penguins. It was truly an astonishing experience seeing so many of them in their natural environment up close! Also it was funny to watch them not only on the beach but in fields among sheep!

Aside from this amazing penguin encounter, we got to see the small port town of Stanley and learn more about the history of the Falkland Islands. We really had never heard of this place before and didn’t know about its history as an English territory (and the land dispute between the UK and Argentina!). The locals were interesting to meet as well with their unique British-esque accents.

Antarctic Peninsula

Next we had basically six days at sea, which included sailing through the Drake Passage going to and from Antarctica. Our experience through the infamous Drake Passage was rocky, but honestly not as bad as we were expecting. Maybe it was luck or maybe because we were on a “larger” ship compared with a lot of the expedition ships that go to Antarctica that you hear about.

As we approached Antarctica, we started seeing lots of really cool icebergs. The captain even took a slight detour off our route to go to the location of the world’s largest iceberg at the time (called “A23a”). That iceberg was at the time approximately three times the size of New York City! Insane! So realistically it just looked like an ice-covered land mass as far as our eyes could tell, but evidently it was free floating. Aside from this, we saw more icebergs than we could count that appeared “huge” to us but that we could see all sides of. They were so interesting to see in all different shapes and sizes! We also saw lots of icebergs with penguins on them! It was so unreal! (You usually had to use binoculars to tell that they were penguins because they just looked like little black dots on the massive ice!) In addition to penguins, we saw many whales, sea birds, and other wild life.

Once we got closer to the Antarctic Peninsula, the views just got more and more spectacular. We are huge fans of seeing glaciers (we’d seen them in Alaska, Switzerland, Norway, New Zealand, etc) because they are just magnificent. So seeing the endless glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula was so amazing! The landscape on Antarctica was truly breath-taking, with sharp mountain peaks, snow and ice covered land, glaciers, and icebergs galore! The whales really put on a show for us as well with many breaching right near our ship. We saw lots of other ships too and even an old shipwreck.

We had a couple days of viewing Antarctica as we sailed closer and around the peninsula. But there was one full day in particular where we were up really close and going through some narrower passageways with incredible views on all sides of the ship, and we all literally could not pull ourselves away from looking at it that day. It was like ‘oh gosh how can we go inside and even eat, we can’t stop staring’! So we were constantly viewing it from the windows if we were inside, or standing on the decks looking out, and Jared and I even took in the views from one of the hot tubs! That night we all finally had to tear ourselves away sometime around 11pm after being up viewing it starting around 6am, ha!

I’ll share some photos, but you truly have to experience it for yourself to believe the grandeur of Antarctica! It was spectacular! It is a bummer that on this cruise we didn’t go ashore, but we still really enjoyed seeing it from the ship. In the future we would consider going back on an expedition cruise that does take you on land.

Ushuaia, Argentina

After seeing Antarctica, we had a couple more ports along our cruise route, but realistically we had already seen the most amazing part that we were going to see on the cruise! The last two stops were technically in Patagonia, but since the next part of our trip took us to other parts of Patagonia for nearly two full weeks, we weren’t too worried about maximizing the time there during such short port days.

Ushuaia, Argentina, dubbed the “Fin del Mundo” (End of the World), was a cool place to visit. The views even just from the port were spectacular. We got a taxi to go do a hike in Tierra del Fuego National Park. The hike was pretty good, taking us to a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains. It was fairly rainy toward the end but we still got some good views. We were hoping to do a little more in the area including going to the “End of the World Post Office,” but unfortunately we didn’t have great cell phone service and we didn’t do a great job of arranging our transportation, so we were a little limited on what we could do. But that’s okay it was still a nice stop!

Punta Arenas, Chile

Our final port was in Punta Arenas, Chile. This day was unfortunately VERY rainy and foggy. We initially hoped to go do a hike in Magnalles National Reserve, but due to the weather we decided to skip hiking this day (again, since we knew we were about to be doing a ton of hiking on the next part of our trip in Patagonia). Instead we just hung around the town a bit. We went to eat at a restaurant called La Tabla Restobar and had some local beer there (Cerveza Austral). We also tried the famous Kiosko Roca, where we got the Choripán and Leche con Plátano. Then we picked up some souvenirs. I also mailed some Antarctica and Falkland Islands post cards from here, which sadly I don’t think actually ever made it to the recipients, which I was super bummed to find out later when we got home.

After this, we had a couple more sea days, which included sailing through the Chilean fjords for some more beautiful views, before ending our cruise on the other side of South America from where we began, in Santiago, Chile.

Santiago, Chile

We spent two nights in the capital of Chile between when we disembarked the cruise and flew down to Patagonia. We did some sightseeing and walking around the city. We did a short hike that took us up to a popular high point, Cerro San Cristóbal, with nice views of the city. We also checked out the Central Market and Plaza de Armas.

If I recall correctly, I think I had some trouble here getting cash out of the ATMs, which was strange because I’ve really never encountered much issue using my Charles Schwab debit card to withdraw cash in all of the 50+ countries we’ve been to. There’s a chance I’m confusing this with Argentina, but I’m pretty sure it was in Chile. We figured we may need cash when we were in the more remote parts of Chile down in Patagonia. Anyway somehow we managed to get some cash though, and I think that most of the places we went took cards anyway since we were sticking mostly to the tourist locations.

Puerto Natales, Chile

Next we began our Patagonia journey! We flew from Santiago down to Puerto Natales, Chile. This is the main town where tourists begin their trip to go to the famous Torres Del Paine National Park, as it’s the closest town about an hour and a half to two hours from the park. Here we rented a car with our friends and stayed one night in an Airbnb before beginning our days in the park! While we were there, we ate at a cool little crab restaurant called Santolla that had been recommended by our other travel friends. It was more bougee than where we usually eat when we’re traveling to be honest, but it was good! After a quick overnight and getting our rental car, we headed to the park!

Torres Del Paine National Park, Chile

This is the main spot that most people know of when they’re considering taking a trip to Patagonia. The common thing to do is hike what’s called the W-Trek in Torres Del Paine. Most people do this as a multi day/multi night through hike, taking 4-5 days to complete. There’s all kinds of packages you can book, often involving staying either at the “refugios” (hostels) between the main points on the hikes, or camping between the hikes in tents. Usually you book through a company that arranges all of the accommodations, transportation, and supplies for you, then you do the hike either self guided or with a guide. You need to account for getting to different parts of the park which can involve self-transport, buses, and/or ferries.

We looked into some of these packages, but ultimately decided just to book everything on our own and do our own version of the W-trek. We ended up skipping one section of the trek, the least difficult and least interesting section between the Refugio Central and Refugio Cuernos, in order to make our trip into three day-hikes rather than through-hiking, and avoiding having to carry all of our belongings.

Here’s an overview of how we did it:

Day 1:
- Drive Puerto Natales to the east side of the park (1hr 45min)
- Day hike round trip from the Welcome Center near the Central Camping/Hotel Las Torres to the famous Towers Lookout Hike (~12.5 miles)
- Stay the first night in a hostel by Laguna Amarga
Day 2:
- Drive from the Laguna Amarga hostel to Ferry Pudeto (leave car parked here 2 nights)
- Take Ferry from Pudeto to Paine Grande Refugio
  - This drive/ferry cut out the section of the hike we didn’t do to Refugio Cuernos
- Hike roundtrip from Paine Grande to French Valley/British Viewpoint and back to Paine Grande (~16-17 miles round trip)
- Stay night at Paine Grande Refugio
Day 3:
- Hike from Paine Grande to Glacier Grey (7 miles)
- Glacier kayaking tour at Glacier Grey (via Bigfoot Patagonia)
- Return hike from Glacier Grey to Paine Grande (7 miles, which made 14 miles round trip for the day)
- Stay second night at Paine Grande Refugio
Day 4:
- Take ferry back from Paine Grande to Pudeto
- Drive back from Pudeto to Puerto Natales (~2 hours)

Everything worked out really well the way we planned it with no major complications, which was awesome! This area is well known for crazy weather, especially high winds. So overall I’d say we got pretty lucky without having to make any major changes to our plans. It took a lot of planning on our own to get it all to come together, but we and our friends are pretty experienced trip planners at this point so we were up for the challenge. I’d say for most people though, doing it with a guide or at least getting the logistics planned out through a company is probably the way to go.

The only unexpected thing that happened is that Jared ended up hurting his knee on the first day during the first hike to the Towers. This was partly my fault, because I wasn’t in as good of shape as Jared and our friends Laura and Justin, so I was definitely holding the group back a little bit on the hiking pace. Because of this, Jared decided to help me carry my hiking daypack for part of the hike. He was feeling really energetic and not only carried my bag but was running on some of the trail. He’d dealt with some on/off knee pain in the past during hiking, and unfortunately after this hike it decided to rear its ugly head!

So, that was a huge bummer on the first day of hiking because it hindered his hiking on the following days. We ended up finding some used trekking poles in the lost and found at our next stop at Paine Grande, so that helped Jared offload some of the weight from his knee so he was able to still continue on the other hikes. But, it meant he was a lot slower than usual, which actually kind of worked out because then he could go at a slower pace with me, ha. But because of this, we ended up letting Laura and Justin just go ahead of us on the next couple hikes and we didn’t really stick together for those. They also went further than us and made it to the British Lookout (Mirador Britanico) on the second day, whereas we stopped short in the French Valley to make it a shorter round trip hike. Then, on the day we hiked to Glacier Grey to do the kayak tour, they hiked further to the swinging bridges past the glacier, whereas we turned and went back after kayaking.

Besides Jared’s knee pain, we had an amazing experience in the park. The scenery was just unbelievable, especially the famous Towers! The views in the French Valley were also spectacular. And then getting to see Glacier Grey up close via the kayaking tour was a really cool experience too!

Even though the weather didn’t hinder our plans too much, we did encounter the strongest winds we’ve ever experienced on the return hike from the Towers. We were literally clinging to a tree to prevent getting knocked over, and at one point we had to crouch really low to make it safely across this section with an exposed drop off! Otherwise the weather was fairly sunny and nice on the first two day of hiking. But on the third day it was rainy and foggy (and somewhat windy) on our way to Glacier Grey. Luckily it didn’t stop us from making it there and back, but it’s always a bit unpleasant hiking in the rain!

I found it such a unique experience being in this park where we passed different hostels/refugios, then stayed overnight in some of them and had hot meals and hot showers, out in the middle of no where. The hostels were really nice, way nicer than I would’ve thought, with good food and even beer, and very limited pay by the hour wifi ha! It was definitely a once in a lifetime type of experience in very unique place that we will remember forever.

Puerto Natales, Chile

After finishing our trekking adventure in the national park, we drove back to Puerto Natales. We made a brief stop at some beautiful lookouts on the way. Once we got back to the town, we had to return our rental car. We got caught up on some things like laundry, plus shopped for souvenirs and restocked some snacks for the next leg of our trip. We just stayed one more night here to reset before heading to the other part of Patagonia on the Argentina side the next day!

We considered lots of ways to make it work doing both the Chilean and Argentinian sides of Patagonia as far as the logistics and transportation. Ultimately, we decided that having our own rental cars would give us the most flexibility on things we’d like to do. Historically Jared and I have not rented a lot of cars in our travels, relying more on planes, trains, buses and other public transport. But, our friends were more confident in renting cars during their own international travels, and we all figured it made the most sense for this trip. So with that said, we didn’t know how best to navigate having a car in two different countries, so we just rented one in Chile, returned it, then took a bus across the border from Puerto Natales, Chile to El Calafate, Argentina, then rented a different car in Argentina. It was about a six hour bus ride, and everything worked out pretty smoothly with the car rentals in both countries.

El Calafate, Argentina

We stayed three nights in El Calafate in an Airbnb. The main activity we wanted to do while in this area was see the Perito Moreno Glacier which was about an hour and a half away. We decided to do an ice trekking tour with Hielo & Aventura. We’d done glacier trekking before but our friends had not. But every glacier is so unique and we can’t get enough of them so it was an incredible experience for all of us! The tour involved taking a ferry, then a guided trek where they provided the crampons/ice cleats for us. We also got to drink glacier water and have some liquor poured over glacier ice, ha! After our guided tour, we returned to where you can view the glacier from these boardwalks/observation decks. This gave us a different perspective of the glacier from above, which was really beautiful! Did I mention we can’t get enough of glaciers, ha!

We had an extra day in El Calafate, but the weather was bad the next day and we were all feeling pretty fatigued from all the activities, so we laid low in the Airbnb and didn’t do much, then just went out to dinner.

El Chalten, Argentina

Next we drove from El Calafate to El Chalten, Argentina, which was about a 2.5 hour drive. Here we stayed at cute little two bedroom bungalow that was part of a hostel, but was our own, cute private little house. But we still had access to the breakfast that was included in the main hostel, so that was nice. We booked it through Airbnb, but it’s called Hosteria Koonek for anyone interested.

The really cool thing about El Chalten is that it’s a small, walkable village that’s right beside the Los Glaciares National Park, with easy access to walk to the trailheads for the famous Fitz Roy hike and other hikes in the area, right from your hostel or Airbnb. We LOVED El Chalten and actually ended up liking the Argentinian side of Patagonia maybe more than the Chilean side, even though most people really only know about the Chilean side (the W-Trek).

We spent four nights in El Chalten in our little bungalow. We did the Mt. Fitz Roy trail (~14.5 miles) on our first full day. This was a really beautiful hike with awesome views. Unfortunately it was foggy and obscured some of our views on the first day. The next day we hiked to Laguna Torre (~12 miles) which was another beautiful hike, but we continued to have some fog and rain that day. On our last full day, we drove to see a big waterfall (Chorrillo del Salto). I think Laura and Justin also set out on another shorter hike/trail run this day, but they encountered a downpour and we weren’t sad we didn’t join them haha. Besides hiking, we also enjoyed some good food in El Chalten, and had some downtime relaxing at the bungalow!

Since our time in El Chalten was fairly rainy and foggy, we were bummed we didn’t get the views we’d hoped of Mt. Fitz Roy. So on our last morning when we saw the weather was a little nicer, we decided to get up really early and go back to the Fitz Roy hike and just hike the first part of it to the first overlook (Mirador del Fitz Roy) and try our chances at a better view! We did get a better view than the first time, but still not completely unobscured sadly.

Then to our surprise, as we checked out and started our drive out of town, we stopped at a viewpoint just outside of El Chalten to see the best view we’d seen yet of the mountains! It was completely different than the day we arrived when we couldn’t see the mountains hardly at all! The whole drive back I was staring out the rear window of the car in awe of the views!!

Buenos Aires, Argentina

After finishing up in El Chalten, we drove back to El Calafate to return our rental car, then flew back to Buenos Aires where we had started the trip five weeks prior for our cruise! We had a quick overnight in Buenos Aires near the airport before it was time to catch our return flights. Laura and Justin headed back to the US from here, but Jared and I had another week planned for this trip that we wanted to use to check out somewhere else in South America. So we flew from Buenos Aires to Quito, Ecuador!

It was sad to say bye to our friends after spending five weeks traveling together from our Antarctica cruise, through Chile and Argentina! We had never taken a trip with friends before, much less a long international trip, but it all honestly went so well! We have a lot in common with Laura and Justin and we really had the best time!

Quito, Ecuador

Ecuador was somewhere we’d been wanting to go since we had to cancel our first planned South America trip in 2020! We of course wanted to see the capital, Quito, but we’d also heard good things about the “Cloud Forest” area. We had the opportunity to connect with a fellow physical therapist, Cheryl, many years ago who was into the Financial Independence space, and she was living long term in Ecuador. She invited us to stay at her guest house which is located in the Cloud Forest area about two hours north of Quito.

She arranged to have a guide pick us up and drive us from Quito to her guest house, with a couple of stops along the way. We stayed the first night in Quito so that the scenic drive would be in the daytime. We stopped at the Equator museum. Since Quito is right on the equator it is known as the “middle of the world” (Mitad del Mundo), so that was a cool experience. We also saw some gorgeous views and stopped for lunch where we had a great view of some hummingbirds in the rainforest.

Cloud Forest, Ecuador

We had a relaxing few days staying at Cheryl’s guesthouse “Above the Clouds.” She also arranged some activities for us to do in the area, like going to a coffee farm, doing a chocolate tasting, visiting a couple waterfalls, and viewing some native birds. But mostly we were glad for a slower pace during this last few days of our trip! It was also nice to finally get to meet Cheryl in person and spend time with her. If you’re considering going to Ecuador and would like to experience a slower pace of life, send Cheryl a message and consider staying at her guesthouse!

Quito, Ecuador

After a few days in the cloud forest, we headed back to Quito for a couple days in the city before the end of our trip! We happened to be there during Latin America’s “Carnaval” which was neat to see. We saw some of the festival activities going on while we were in the city. We got sprayed with lots of silly string haha, plus saw singing and dancing and celebrating. We also took a Free Walking Tour to see the highlights of the city, and enjoyed lots of good food!

Summary

After traveling for six weeks, we were ready to head back to the US. We’ve done longer trips before, two to five months, but this was a good length trip, especially given how active we were throughout the whole trip! Overall the trip went great with no major challenges. We are so glad that we were able to finally visit Patagonia, and it was so amazing being able to see Antarctica! This meant we made it to our 7th continent, and 56 countries total!

Are these places on your bucket list?

Have you been before?

Let us know in the comments!