Expense spreadsheet

All big trip demands a good planning. An essential item in order to calculate the expenses when you have a limited budget is an expense spreadsheet. So, we decided to put all computable expenses in an Excel spreadsheet in order to have an idea of how much the trip would cost in total.

We would like to share all the information we got related to lodging, excursions, tickets, conveyance and  some other relevant points. You can access the spreadsheet clicking here. Unfortunately it is just avaliable in Portuguese.

For any questions we are available.

TDP Hints

Hi folks! During these five months we’ve read a lot about TDP. Thus, we decided to post some relevant advices about the local. TDP is a very peculiar place, so is always important to know what is up to face in order to minimize the adversities. Well, is important to remind that these hints didn't come from own experiences, but we’ll use them to help us in the journey. When we finish our own tour, we’ll bring more information and hints.

Conveyance:

• Daily buses from Puerto Natales (07:30 am and 02:00 pm).

• Arrival time (morning): Laguna Amarga (09:45 am), Pudeto (10:45 am) e Administration (11:45 am).

• Some of the companies in this line: “Buses Gomes” and “Buses Pacheco”.

• Tourist’s tickets price: 15.000 Chilean pesos in high season and 8.000 in low season.

Infrastructure and Lodging:

• Mobiles and internet doesn’t work inside the Park.

• There are basically 3 types of lodging: Hotel, shelter and camping.

• In the shelters you can rent a bed. They average cost the same as a good Hotel room.

• The camping is very much cheaper than shelter.

• The camping sites are usually precarious. Some of them offer services like shower, food, drinks and others, but the price is high.

• Be prepared to sleep without a shower sometimes. Take with you a pack of baby wipes.

Weather:
 

• Even in the summer, the temperature can be close to 0 Celcius.

• Even in summer can snow.

• You'll probably face a pouring rain.

• The Wind in certain points of the park is brutal, so don't understimate it.

• Is adequate use waterproof boots, coat and pants.

Other hints:

• Remember: An average of 20 km per Day of trekking.

• Remember: You’ll carry a backpack with at least 10 Kg during the walk.

• This is an ecological park, so there is a remote possibility to face a wild beast. So, beware of it.

The W tour

Hi folks, let's talk about the most expected part of our travel: The W tour in TDP (Torres del Paine).

The National Park of TDP with no doubt is one of the most beautiful places in the world and there we can find one of the best trekking tours ever. Basically there are 2 options: The "W" and the "O". The "O" tour is like a full round in the National Park and it's just recommended to the people experienced with long trekking because it takes around 10 days to accomplish. The "W" tour is the most famous, because it is a reduced version of the "O" and it takes around 4 days (80km) to finish. Add to that, in the W you can see the most attractive landscapes of the Park: The "Glaciar Grey" and the Paine Towers ("Las Torres") itself.

The chosen one was the "W" and below you can see the Park map with the route that we will follow together with some information about the time and distance of each day of the trek. 

The W tour

For the full map and more information visit: http://www.parquetorresdelpaine.cl/

In the next post we will bring more relevant information about the "W" and TDP itself. We hope you liked!

Itinerary Map

Here I post a map in order to help you to know exactly where is located each place we are going to visit:

Itinerary

Itinerary

The first step in order to build our itinerary was to pick up the cities and locations that we wanted to visit. However it was not simply choose the best ones, we needed to research the logistic between them and eliminate the ones that could demand too much effort, time and money to visit. Secondly, we needed to find out the best things to do and then choose the best excursions and how many days should be needed for each place. Thirdly, we needed to define the means of conveyance should be used between each location. The priority was always the bus, because we wanted to save money whenever was possible. Therefore we only decided for airline tickets to the very long distances. Fourthly, we picked up the schedule of all means of conveyance in order to fit with itinerary in an easy and convenient way. Finally, we ordered all the flights.

Our itinerary finally took shape and you can take a look how it is right now just a 10 days from the beginning of the travel:

1° dia (29/01) – Brasília -> (12:05) Santiago (City Tour with shopping and some museum)
2° dia (30/01) - Santiago (Concha y Toro Winery + City Tour)
3° dia (31/01) – Santiago (Free) (20:00) -> Pucon

4° dia (01/02) – (07:00) Pucon (City Tour + Rafting)
5° dia (02/02) - Pucon (Villarica Volcano climbing)
6° dia (03/02) - Pucon (Tour Termas Geométricas or Termas Geométricas + Huerquehue National Park)

7° dia (04/02) – Pucon (08:00) –> (13:30) Puerto Varas (City Tour + Old Gran Hotel Cassino)
8° dia (05/02) - Puerto Varas (Llanquihue lake, Playa Hermosa, Saltos de Petrohué, Peulla, Ossonoro Volcano or Frutillar)
9° dia (06/02) - Puerto Varas (08:55) -> Bariloche (16:00 - City tour)
10° dia (07/02) - Bariloche (Circuito Chico)
11° dia (08/02) - Bariloche (Free)

12° dia (09/02) - Bariloche (13:05) -> (14:50) El Calafate (City Tour)
13° dia (10/02) - El Calafate (Minitrecking or Big Ice)
14° dia (11/02) - El Calafate (08:00) -> El Chaltén (11:00 - Laguna de Los Tres)
15° dia (12/02) - El Chaltén – (Laguna de Los Tres) (18:00) -> (21:00) Calafate

16° dia (13/02) - Calafate (08:00) -> (13:00-14:00) Puerto Natales (Equipment and storage shopping for TDP)
17° dia (14/02) - Puerto Natales (07:30) -> (10:45 – Guardería Pudeto) Torres del Paine (W dia I - Glaciar Grey)
18° dia (15/02) - Torres del Paine (W dia II – Mirador Los Cerros)
19° dia (16/02) - Torres del Paine (W dia III)
20° dia (17/02) - Torres del Paine (W dia IV – Las Torres) (19:45) -> (22:45) Puerto Natales
21° dia (18/02) - Puerto Natales (08:00) -> (11:00) Punta Arenas (City Tour)
22° dia (19/02) - Punta Arenas (Pinguinera Isla Magdalena)
23° dia (20/02) - Punta Arenas (08:00-09:00) -> Ushuaia (21:00)

24° dia (21/02) - Ushuaia (City Tour + Penitentiary museum + Of the end of the World museum)
25° dia (22/02) - Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego National Park (50 pesos)
26° dia (23/02) - Ushuaia (Glaciar Martial or Pinguinera) (19:55) -> (23:30) Buenos Aires

27° dia (24/02) - Buenos Aires (City Tour: Plaza de Mayo, Casa Rosada, Catedral Metropolitana, Praza del Congreso)
28° dia (25/02) - Buenos Aires (San Telmo, Mercado Municipal, Plaza San Martín, Tango)
29° dia (26/02) - Buenos Aires (Recoleta + La Boca or Tigre's river tour)
30° dia (27/02) - Buenos Aires (05:55) -> (14:05) Brasília

The kickoff

There were years and years to get our first vacations. This is a common problem that must be faced by a couple that works in different places with different policy. Fortunately we could arrange ourselves and schedule our 30 day vacations to January 29, 2011. However the main thing was up to come and it was a huge dilemma: Where to go?

There are a lot of places to visit around the world and we would have time for it. However, international trips, as the one we would like to have, usually are so expensive and so we had to find a solution with a great cost/benefit. Our first choice would be a traditional backpacking through Europe, but the season (winter there) and the cash transactions in Euro gave us food for thought and soon we decided to forget about the “Old Continent”. My wife Emanuella always wanted to try a wild vacation, but I was afraid of that idea because is something very different from our lifestyle, nevertheless I decided to look for locations which could offer that kind of attraction. Then we figured out that many of the most beautiful places in the world were there, so close to Brazil. So it was how we decided to have a trip in South America.

After a bunch of researches just two options remained: 1. Atacama Desert, “Salar de Uyuni” and Machu Pichu:

Machu Pichu, Salar de Uyuni and Atacama

or 2. Andes Lakes with Chilean and Argentinean Patagonia:

Patagonia

It was not easy decide, both paths were captivating and inspiring, but the Patagonia pictures and landscapes seduced us so much that we could not resist to them. Then me and Emanuella left the fears behind and decided to put the backpack on the back and go to an adventure full of expectations straight to Patagonia.

We didn’t realize how much effort this choice would demand from us. We spent around 5 months reading forums, blogs and magazines, searching through the internet, researching maps of Chile and Argentina, looking for the best locations, tracking viable routes, choosing the best way for transportation from a place to another, lodgings, excursions and the cost of each stuff related to the trip in order to have our itinerary complete, with all the dates and time scheduled. We wanted all planned, with no gaps which could harm the rest of the trip. For all of this we recommend everybody that come to plan a big vacation in the backpacker stile, to do it with priority, because there are many points to take into account and an incomplete planning could ruin your itinerary, bringing stress and also making you lose money, since there is a great chance to spend much more than the expected.