Maria returned in February from a trekking holiday in Torres del Paine. Here she tells us about her experiences on her trip and in booking with Swoop and our partners…
How was your experience of booking with Swoop Patagonia?
My trip was great, thanks for all your help in planning it!
How was your W Trek?
My W Trek was great and I was lucky with the Patagonian weather!
I realise now that I really didn’t necessarily need a guide as the trails are so well marked, and my group walked slower than I would have liked, but it was nice having company, and the guide was very nice too. One day I chose to trek alone, as the Guide decided not to take the group up to the final lookout (due to their fitness levels). Perhaps it might be useful to have treks of different levels of speed.
Harriet from Swoop Says: Generally if people don’t have much trekking experience we recommend that they do the trek guided trek because we don’t know how they will get on. Some people like yourself decide that they would have been fine without a guide and others are not as fit and capable of navigation. In addition a guide adds a lot of value to people’s treks in terms of local knowledge and as you say, being in a group and with a guide is a lot of fun. It is quite hard to divide people up according to ability because we have no way of assessing this but we can definitely warn people that their group may be quite slow so we will bear that in mind in future. I am glad you were able to get up to the viewpoints in spite of your slow group. What great views!
I found that the budget you had recommended did not quite stretch far enough in Chile. Of course I know this was only a recommendation, but even on my very frugal budget (cheapest dorm rooms, no alcohol or souvenirs, local food etc), I struggled. I would advise people to change over more Chilean pesos – maybe 300.
Argentina was much cheaper, although it would’ve been better for me to take euros to change at the unofficial rates, as they were much better than the Blue dollar rates believe it or not
These aren’t criticisms of your services however, just some things that I hope may be helpful. Thanks again for all your help once again!!
Harriet from Swoop Says: It is interesting what you say about Euros, none of us have experienced Euros getting a better rate than dollars so it is something we will look for when we are in Argentina in March. Thanks also for your feedback about your budget. It is very hard for us to calculate budgets for people and it’s definitely something we should have more information about on our site. When I go out in March I am going to put together some more detailed information about budgeting so your information is really useful!
Swoop’s tips on Currency in Patagonia
