Glacier hike and day tour guide in Buenas Aires.

Great holiday

I would recommend that if someone is coming into a new country that you have clear directions on how they can smoothly connect with your in country partners. We had specific directions to take our passports and go to a specific transport company in the bus station that did not exisit! This was fairly disconcerning since even the offices of other companies in the bus station had never heard of the company we were looking for!! To add to the hassle it was not easy to find the wifi service which we needed to for contacting anyone. Once we did we were told to wait on the taxi side fo the building for the ride (the van pulled up to the bus side). As mentioned previously the hotel Cumbres Nevadas- we would recommend you find a new partner on that. Staff seemed helpless to make any changes to the tempurature in the hotel. In fact some staff had resorted to opening front door and work sweating in short sleeve shirt. I ran around turning every heater off I could find on the upper floor with minimal impact. The door to our room actual came off when we checked in and I had to put it back on. The other very annoying part was the exceptionally bright street lights (I realize not hotel's issue)

Use SWOOP. Don't stay in Cumbres Nevadas hotel. Don't plan on mailing a post card to your family or friends as Post service is considered very unreliable by locals. Add day of not hiking into your calendar to keep wife happier. Make sure you do the Loma del Pliegue Tumbado hike (one of the better hikes)(and weather was not amazing that day). Go to both Chile and Argentina if you can. Hike earlier in the day to be in front of the crowds ( you will never be hiking alone). I had good amount of tip money but wish I had more smaller denominations like $5 and $10 to use. Be comfortable with figuring things out only in Spanish (not like Europe where locals know 3-4 languages). You won't need extra snacks-the lunches provided are a serious amount of food. Make time for the mini glacier trek, it was one of our best days while on holiday (yes, the monopoly makes it pricey). Use the swoop packing list and you should be just fine-layers, layers, layers. A buff was my new best friend for hiking in all the wind.

Yes, we found both Chile and Argentina to feel safe and welcoming to tourists. Food was much better than I had expected. People who travel are interesting to visit with overall. Sad to hear the information about speed of Glacier melt, but encouraging to hear that both countries seem to be making plans for the changes to climate that are affecting them vs ingnoring what is occurring.

Not sure who employ's who with your partners- The driver we had for the day city tour and the guide (Gabby) were excellent-really enjoyed our time with them. The driver who took us to the Tango- should be assigned only golf carts to drive as he thinks he's in a video game and it took my wife an hour to calm down after coming home from the Tango show as she thought mulitple times we were going to be in a accident due to his driving (he seemed like a very nice guy...but he should not be driving people to a relaxing dinner event) Marcella-nailed it on the Gelato recommendation (even if she calls it icecream) I would recommend sharing more details about how chatoic the airports can be in Argentina when it comes to lines. Same with the ferry to Uruguay.

We were very well prepared and happy to never have needed our rain pants! Swoop had lots of practical information-I think the tipping blog or post was somewhat not aligned with the written "recommendations" I remember reading. I guess one example was that there is essentially a "service tax" that is added to meals in Argentina for I think covering cost of washing linen's or other business costs-I don't consider this something that should be included in amount for the tip and I don't recall it being mentioned in the video blog (could be wrong). We also learned that if you include a tip on the credit card the business owner takes half (reportedly to cover card fee's, but I have to wonder since no card has a 5% fee for use)

Yes

No

No

First guide had 9 people in the group-this seemed excessive to me for the terrain we were hiking and not that personal. We happened to have the same guide the next day with just one other person and it made the trip completly different -for the better. Clearly guides who are really climbers looking for work have a different pace than those who are more about what's going on around the trail with flora and fauna-it would be better for Swoop to try and get those people guiding trips unless blasting out the miles in more important for the client. We felt a bit rushed leaving the cornerstone viewing places just to get back to town by 3:30 or 4pm when there is lots of daylight left and have travelled a very long way to enjoy these fantastic places. Certainly harder for a guide to flush out the timelines when you have a group of 9 vs 3! We hiked in Chile and they said the ration there was max of 6 people/guide. I think some of our guides I would recommend and others probably didn't add a whole lot to the hike so harder to recommend them to competent hiking friends that could easily manage these trails.

The actual Glacier hike was one of our trip highlights -the guides were fantastic, very knowledgeable, engaged and fun. The bus/boat guides were also very nice, helpful, and informative. Bus was clean, ride was comfortable and safe. Boat ride was to short and it was a bit confusing on how long we would be inside or allowed outside. Amazing views and really fun however.

For how many visitors they have we were surprised the trail maintenance was not better. No reason for there not to be a up trail and a down trail. the amount of TP left behind rocks/trees was appalling and seems like no park staff care and guides just shrug their shoulders about it. I expect soon people will not be able to safely drink out of so many streams around the park. The views we had were outstanding and the days that were not was just how mountain weather works. For other travellers I would say be ready to have fairly crowed trails at times, expect many people to not have good trail etiquette depending on where they might be from in the world. All this I would still tell them to go and see these places!