Antarctica Travel Agents & Reviews

Alejandro from our travel company helped us arrange a trip for my 78-year-old father and my 2 sons to Argentina, Antarctica and the Falkland Islands. It perfectly met their desires, calendars and budget. Lots of pre-travel forms and doctors' approvals were needed by the excursion cruise line. Alejandro helped guide us through making the cruise arrangements and getting the paperwork correctly submitted on time. He was extremely responsive to all our needs and did an outstanding job at everything we would expect of a high-quality travel agent.

But that was just the beginning. Many great travel agents can help plan a wonderful trip, but the very special ones are able to help when things go wrong or opportunities present themselves, and quickly make adjustments. Things started going wrong after the first leg of the trip. The connection in Dallas was delayed overnight so my Dad and sons were not able to check in with the cruise line’s travel agent in Buenos Aires the day before the cruise ship left from the southern tip of South America. Instead of having a day to tour Buenos Aires and follow the lead of the cruise line's travel agent to get to their charter flight, their flight from Dallas didn't arrive in Buenos Aires until after 1 a.m. the next day; exactly when Argentina’s World Cup Championship team arrived to a million fans swarming the airport and all roads to it.

Alejandro anticipated the problem and arranged to have our guide meet our flight to ensure that my family got through airport construction and to the terminal where their charter was to depart from. My family didn’t know which of 2 airlines their charter was with or when it was leaving. Alejandro had tracked down and coordinated with the person in charge of getting cruise passengers from the city and onto the charter flights, so our guide could get my family checked in ahead of the others. The travel agent responsible for the other passengers for the cruise was stuck in traffic with them and was hours late getting to the airport. By the time they arrived, we had been checked in and were ready to go. My father is a very experienced traveler, but readily admitted he could not have found out where they needed to be and gotten there or found the cruise line’s travel agent without the assistance Alejandro arranged.  Alejandro's anticipation of the problem enabled my family to avoid massive stress and possibly to miss the connection to their once in a lifetime expedition.

Then, the night before the return flight from Tierra Del Fuego to Buenos Aires, my family found out that their charter flight would leave much earlier than expected. My Dad and sons would have an 8-hour layover at the Buenos Aires Airport. Alejandro was able to arrange for our guide to take them on a tour of the city during their layover and get them back to the airport on time. Thus, through Alejandro’s great effort, my family got to see Buenos Aires which they missed doing earlier in their trip because of their flight delay in Dallas. 

The bottom line is that my Dad and sons avoided stressful disasters and had the trip of a lifetime together thanks to Alejandro’s skill and determination to make it happen. 

Great communication and service. 

We had a marvelous, unforgettable trip overall, including visits to Santiago, the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, Easter Island, Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, Chile, and finally Antarctica. We experienced a great variety of Chile's vast geography and ecology, from the beautiful central valleys, to the northern desert, to the tropical Polynesian island of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), to the forests and mountains of Patagonia. The lodges and excursions they provided in each destination were well organized, with knowledgeable, English-speaking guides. We visited Antarctica and it was spectacular. The tour operator offers expedition travel for people who want to experience the polar regions firsthand. Our expedition, 14 days that went below the Antarctica Circle, featured expert guides who enjoyed sharing their considerable knowledge of geology, glaciers and ice (!), mammals, birds, and plants, to name just a portion, and excursions twice daily on zodiacs to sail among glaciers and whales and seals and walk among penguins and skuas. It was not a leisure cruise, but an expedition for folks who want to experience and appreciate the Antarctica up close. That said, the ship was extremely comfortable, with a remarkably hospitable staff and delicious, copious food.

Our travel company was excellent in helping us to conceptualize, plan, and organize our trip. They offered many useful suggestions about where to go, how much time to spend in each destination, and which options to consider for hotels/lodges and the Antarctica expedition. We greatly appreciated their advice and assistance in putting together our trip. All of the hotel and transit reservations were made, and that part of the trip went smoothly.

However, there was a persistent problem with our air travel in Chile that was unnecessary, and which caused us needless aggravation. For our internal flights (to/from Calama/Atacama, and to Puerto Natales), our travel company purchased the cheapest LAN tickets that did not include baggage allowance. I discovered this a month before we were set to travel, when I was carefully reviewing the reservations (and about 5 months after they purchased the tickets). When I informed the travel company in early January 2018, I said we of course had baggage (especially cold weather gear for Antarctica) and needed the 23 kg allowance. After I informed them of the problem, they did work to correct the problem, telling us they had purchased baggage allowances for those flights that didn't originally have them. We got a receipt from them for baggage for one of those flights (to Puerto Natales), and were told it was resolved for the Calama flights but LAN couldn't provide a receipt. When we did check in for those flights, the baggage allowance was covered, but our concern before each flight could have been avoided if they had bought the correct tickets. 

This problem became more apparent, and more aggravating when we were checking in to fly from Atacama to Santiago, and then on to Easter Island. We were told we could not check our bags all the way through to Easter Island because our tickets for the two flights that day were not on the same record. (This was due to the fact that two different priced tickets had been purchased. The Easter Island tickets were regular, economy tickets.) So we had to check in our bags to Santiago, retrieve them from baggage claim at Santiago Airport, and then return to the Departures area of the airport and check them in for the flight to Easter Island. Santiago Airport is a huge, crowded, messy airport, and this process of literally running around the airport took us 1.5 hours (of what was a 2 hour layover). We arrived at our gate for Easter Island just as people were boarding. This was not what we planned for or expected—and it could and should have been avoided if the travel company had bought the proper air tickets from the start.