Our Argentine Adventure – an intro

When prepping for our Argentine adventure I realised a slight drawback of having a whole country on your bucket list. I had a very good idea of what I wanted to see and do; which is great, but always makes planning harder as you normally can't just go for something off the shelf that someone else has put together - it 'has' to be totally bespoke. As Independent Travel Agents we are used to building incredible holidays for our clients...what follows is an account of another one that we designed for us to enjoy!

Whether for us or for a client I always start by looking at the trips that are available from dedicated, specialist companies. If the perfect trip is out there that ticks every box then there's no point in trying to reinvent the wheel! For when we wanted to visit, there was nothing 'just right' for us for Argentina, and what was available was prohibitively expensive... so I very quickly decided that this would be a fully bespoke trip. I enjoy travel differently to how the average traveller might do – I find that a ‘standard’ tour would spend way too much time at point A, nowhere near enough at point B etc, etc. All travellers are different and have different ways of enjoying exploring new locations so designing something that is perfect seems like the sensible option…especially when there is a cost saving to be had.

Initial quotes for a two week trip that ticked some of the boxes came in at around £6,750 per person including economy flights and staying in hostel style accommodation. By using our booking platform, and utilising discount codes like we do for our own clients we managed to plan and book a two week trip that took in everything that I wanted to see for around £1,700 per person less. Amazingly, our reduced price trip included return international business class flights (which were paid for using Avios points that I had been saving, so the actual monetary saving was even more), and a stay at the 5 star Gran Meliá Iguazu...complete with an upgrade to a falls view room.

It's easy to assume that a packaged tour gives the best value, but we have consistently found the opposite to be true. A tour is great for a solo traveller, and maybe when you're planning on visiting a country where the language is totally different. When you're married to your travelling companion, who happens to speak fluent Spanish...a self guided trip in Argentina make so much more sense, saves loads of money, and really enhances the overall experience!

Whilst touching on the 'speaking Spanish' subject, it's important to mention that this was a lifesaver in Buenos Aires. One would usually think that a capital city (especially the size of BA) would be the place in a country that you could get away with not speaking the language - and that your problems would start when you headed out to the countryside...this was not the case at all! If it hadn't of been for Gill's Spanish, I would have ordered almost every meal by pointing, and had every interaction at increasing volumes of English! Taxis were easy (as Uber is available in Buenos Aires) so I knew we were going to get to the right place each time, but communicating when we arrived there would have been really tricky - speaking and understanding some basic Spanish (or having a wife - or husband - who does) is really useful in Buenos Aires.

We visited Argentina at the start of February - the height of their summer. This meant that Buenos Aires was hot (30-35°c) then the temperature cooled as we headed down the country, before getting back to roasting in Mendoza and positively tropical in Iguazu. Whilst cooler, it was comfortable in the south of Argentina, but we did have to pack quite a variety of clothes 'just in case'. The forecasts for weather based on the time of year were as unreliable for there as we have found for anywhere else in the world. We had something for absolutely every eventuality but didn't need a lot of it...better that than wishing you had brought it with you though! Despite the generally good weather, we were both glad of our full winter gear in Ushuaia when the wind was blowing at around 100km/h, and temperatures dropping down to around 5°C at night. We took so much stuff with us that Gill wasn't able to enjoy being a 'backpacker' - she wrote about this, and her packing list, here.

Argentina is massive. Everyone that I have spoken to about our trip is shocked that we flew almost as many miles down, across and up Argentina as we did across the Atlantic to get there from Madrid. The distances involved make flying the only sensible option if you have limited time. There are some amazing driving routes to get through the country if you have more time than we did to explore though. 

All of our internal flights were with the national airline - Aerolineas Argentinas. I was dreading these as the countdown to the holiday was interrupted by what felt like endless time changes...some were easy to manage with 30 minutes changes, others meant that we had to totally replan our activities for days, and even sleep on the floor of Buenos Aires airport one night. Despite all of the schedule changes the flights themselves were as good as gold - usually leaving on time, and mostly arriving on time. We knew that we'd have to pay excess baggage charges as we could only pre-book 15kg of luggage but even this was a smooth process, and we got let off the charges a couple of times (once because the lady checking us in read that her and I shared our birthday from my passport!)

I find that airline reviews (and reviews in general maybe), have to be taken with a pinch of salt and this was particularly true for Aerolineas Argentinas who review badly but were overall pretty decent for us. I'm not sure why, but we seemed to get allocated the emergency exit seats each time we checked in at the airport...free additional legroom (as well as being in control of how quickly you could get out in the case of an emergency) definitely helps their cause in my eyes!

One funny thing worth mentioning while talking about the internal flights, is the rapturous applause on landing from the locals. I've never experienced anything like it...I'm used to a couple of people doing a quiet, reserved, British round of applause on landing but this was pretty much the whole plane...every time!

I booked our international flights through British Airways, they were operated by Iberia. We flew to Madrid from Heathrow and stayed the night in sleep pods airside at Madrid airport before our flight the next day to Buenos Aires. I was not a fan of the initial price to upgrade to business class, so we left it until online check in and got an offer that seemed much more reasonable. I only upgraded the Madrid to Buenos Aries leg as flying to Madrid from England is so easy. Because we had business class on our booking we were able to check in as such at Heathrow (and avoid a massive queue), and go through the express lane of security – thanks BA!

The sleep pods were a strange concept. Definitely better than trying to sleep in an airport itself (which we now know from experience) but not the soundproofed, relaxing night we were promised. It was good to have somewhere to lay our heads, and the opportunity to have a shower before the next leg of the journey was a real positive.

The flight was around 11.5 hours and (apart from a fair amount of turbulence) was relatively easy. We both ate and drank plenty, and made the most of the lie flat seats by having a nice long sleep. It was around 19:00 local time by the time we collected our suitcases and got a taxi towards our hotel in Buenos Aries, ready for our next couple of days of adventures which you'll be able read about soon.

From Buenos Aries we went on to El Calafate, then to Ushuaia, Mendoza (via, and including an airport change in Buenos Aries), Iguazu (via Salta), then back to Buenos Aires and across town to the other airport for our flight home. It certainly was a busy 2 weeks – I’m looking forward to reliving it by reading through our notes and writing about it!