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Accommodations
* Click on hotel name to visit hotel web-site.
Buenos Aires, Argentina
The Hotel Emperador Buenos Aires is located on the Avenida del Libertador in the heart of Buenos Aires, close to art galleries and museums, shopping, dining, and historic areas. The contemporary 265-room hotel has a terrace restaurant and bar, fitness center, spa with sauna and massage treatments, solarium, complimentary Wi-Fi Internet access, laundry and dry cleaning services, and indoor pool. Air-conditioned guest rooms have private bath with hair dryer, safe deposit box, mini-bar, TV, and phone.
Torres del Paine, Chile
Located at the entrance of Torres del Paine National Park with panoramic views of the Paine mountain range, this wood-and-stone lodging offers such amenities as restaurant and bar, gift shop, library, Internet access, three golf greens, free golf clubs and fishing gear rentals, and laundry and dry cleaning services. The 95 rustic-style guest rooms have private bath with hair dryer, fan, mini-bar, complimentary Wi-Fi Internet access, and phone.
Punta Arenas, Chile
The stylish Hotel Cabo de Hornos is located in the center of Punta Arenas, only a few blocks from the Strait of Magellan. The hotel’s amenities include a restaurant, bar, and lounge; library; fitness center; laundry service; and complimentary Wi-Fi Internet access. Each of the hotel’s 110 guest rooms are decorated with local woods and plush carpets, and feature private bath with separate tub, writing desk, TV, and phone.
Santiago, Chile
Opened in 2012, this bright, modern 295-room hotel is located in one of Santiago’s most stylish neighborhoods. The hotel features a restaurant and bar, unheated outdoor swimming pool, gym facilities, complimentary Wi-Fi internet access, and gift shop. Each air-conditioned guest room offers a private bath with hairdryer, in-room safe, TV, phone, and minibar.
Tour Extension
Optional Pre-Program to Iguazu Falls — 2 Days, 2 Nights
Discover the magnificence of one of the world’s iconic landmarks and great natural wonders. Your tour extension price includes:
- Round-trip air transportation Buenos Aires/Iguazu Falls inclusive of airline taxes and departure fees
- 2 nights accommodations at Loi Suites Iguazu Hotel (Superior First Class)
- 3 meals: 2 breakfasts, 1 dinner
- Services of a professional tour representative
- Private motorcoach/van transportation
- Included sightseeing: Iguazu Falls National Park (Argentine side of the falls) with viewing opportunities
- Gratuities for tour representative, dining room servers, airport and hotel porters, and all drivers
Loi Suites Iguazú Hotel
The Loi Suites Iguazú Hotel is located in the heart of the jungle on a promontory overlooking the Iguazú River, just a 15-minute drive from Iguazú Falls. The 162-room hotel features two restaurants, bar/lounge, fitness center and spa with massage treatments, outdoor swimming pools, sauna, and complimentary Wi-Fi Internet access in public areas. Air-conditioned guest rooms have private bath with hair dryer, in-room safe, mini-refrigerator, internet access (surcharge), TV, and phone.
Activity Level
Expectations: This Classic Land journey feature long touring days, many full-day excursions, and a full and active itinerary with a faster pace and longer distances. Some tours may have activities with higher intensity and more active options. Excursions require standing and walking for extended periods of time, sometimes over difficult terrain (cobblestones, city hills, stairs without handrails, limited or no access to elevators, muddy/slippery walking/hiking trails), and walking to city centers where coaches are prohibited. Certain excursions feature hiking, use of Zodiac crafts or other smaller ship conveyances, and multiple internal plane rides. Some days may require early morning departures and later evening returns. Travelers will be in remote and/or rugged regions and may be touring at higher altitudes with steep ascents/descents. Leisure time is built in throughout the itinerary. Certain tours feature options for more active excursions (such as moderate hiking, swimming, snorkeling, canoeing, bicycling, rafting, or kayaking), though another choice may be offered for an alternate skill level.
Appropriate for: Travelers who are physically fit, lead active lives, are comfortable participating in long days of activities, and expect some physical exertion.
Ship
Stella Australis
The M/V Stella Australis offers a comfortable travel experience in one of the world’s most remote regions. The ship offers daily land excursions (weather permitting); open bar service (select wines and liquors); boutique; on-board lectures; game room; panoramic lounge; library; wide promenade deck; fitness center; and open bridge policy. There is no elevator onboard ship. Air-conditioned cabins have private bath with hair dryer, in-room safes, and panoramic windows. While on board, you will not have cell phone service or Wi-Fi internet access.
Stella Australis
The M/V Stella Australis offers a comfortable travel experience in one of the world’s most remote regions. The ship offers daily land excursions (weather permitting); open bar service (select wines and liquors); boutique; on-board lectures; game room; panoramic lounge; library; wide promenade deck; fitness center; and open bridge policy. There is no elevator onboard ship. Air-conditioned cabins have private bath with hair dryer, in-room safes, and panoramic windows. While on board, you will not have cell phone service or Wi-Fi internet access.
Testimonials
WHAT OUR TRAVELERS SAY
Patagonia was life-changing; unlike any other place on earth.
- Jane V.
The Patagonian Explorer was all that we had envisioned and more! Amazing natural beauty, extremely well educated, enlightening lectures. We will travel with Smithsonian Journeys again.
- Lynn and Tim P.
Reading List
Highly Recommended
In Patagonia (Penguin Classics)
By: Bruce Chatwin
Gently used copy. No ncrease to sapine. Clean unmarked copy. mild shelf/edge wear from normal handling. Satisfaction guartanteed!
The Whispering Land
By: Gerald Durrell
Fans of Gerard Durrell's beloved classic My Family and Other Animals (the inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece PBS) and other accounts of his lifelong fascination with members of the animal kingdom will rejoice at The Whispering Land. The sequel to A Zoo in My Luggage, this is the story of how Durrell and his wife's zoo-building efforts at England's Jersey Zoo led them and a team of helpers on an eight-month safari in Argentina to look for South American specimens. Through windswept Patagonian shores and tropical forests in Argentina, from ocelots to penguins, fur seals to parrots, Durrell captures the landscape and its inhabitants with his signature charm and humor.
Patagonia: A Cultural History (Landscapes of the Imagination)
By: Chris Moss
Patagonia is the ultimate landscape of the mind. Like Siberia and the Sahara, it has become a metaphor for nothingness and extremity. Its frontiers have stretched beyond the political boundaries of Argentina and Chile to encompass an evocative idea of place. A vast triangle at the southern tip of the New World, this region of barren steppes, soaring peaks and fierce winds was populated by small tribes of hunter-gatherers and roaming nomads when Ferdinand Magellan made landfall in 1520. A fat...
Fodor's Essential Argentina: with the Wine Country, Uruguay & Chilean Patagonia (Full-color Travel Guide)
By: Fodor’s Travel Guides
Also Recommended
Lonely Planet Latin American Spanish Phrasebook & Dictionary 9
By: Esposto, Roberto
Buenos Aires: A Cultural History (Cultural Histories Series)
By: Jason Wilson
The most European of South American cities, Buenos Aires evokes exile and nostalgia. A nineteenth-century replica of Paris or Madrid set adrift in an alien continent, its identity is neither of the Old World nor the New. The Argentine capital's rootlessness has famously found expression in the melancholy of tango and, more recently, in a vogue for psychoanalysis even more widespread than New York's.Jason Wilson explores this contradictory and culturally rich city by tracing its development from remote ranching settlement to modern metropolis. Taking landmarks, both well-known and hidden, as starting points for a journey of discovery, he looks at the events, people and writing that have shaped modern Buenos Aires and its cultural life. The city of Borges and Cortazar: the European literary tradition, magical realism and fantasy, the construction of an Argentine voice, writers local and foreign. The city of tango: the music of longing and despair, a meeting-point of machismo and sensuality, lowlife culture of the port. The city of passions: the cult of Evita Peron, the life-and-death matter of soccer, the totalitarian political legacy.
Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition)
By: Hudson, W. H.
Voyaging: Southward from the Strait of Magellan
By: Rockwell Kent
Rockwell Kent is one of America's most famous graphic artists. He was also an avid traveler. Kent was especially fascinated by remote Arctic lands and often stayed for extended periods of time to paint, write, and become acquainted with the local inhabitants. Between 1918 and 1935, he wrote and illustrated several popular books about his travels. Voyaging, originally published in 1924, is the engaging story of Kent's sailing voyage to Tierra del Fuego. Kent is a charming writer and keen observer of both the land and its people. The book is beautifully and generously illustrated with Kent's distinctive woodcuts.The first edition was published to great critical acclaim. New Republic wrote, "the land lives. A land where roses are as big as sun-flowers, where gales gnaw against bleak cliffs . . . At the end of the earth, there is the paradox of the dwarf and the giant." The Nation said, "Kent has caught the wild beauty of this ominous region -- iron crags ringed with the froth of blown surf, wind-tortured trees, distant peaks incrusted with dazzling snow; but out of the very heart of this bewildering beauty emanates a sense of unseen presences appallingly, implacably hostile to man."
Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness
By: Peter Matthiessen
A classic work of nature and humanity, by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), author of the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard and the new novel In Paradise Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed 20,000 miles of the South American wilderness, from the Amazon rain forests to Machu Picchu, high in the Andes, down to Tierra del Fuego and back. He followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered fossils in the depths of the Peruvian jungle. Filled with observations and descriptions of the people and the fading wildlife of this vast world to the south, The Cloud Forest is his incisive, wry report of his expedition into some of the last and most exotic wild terrains in the world.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Rounding The Horn Publisher: Basic Books
By: Dallas Murphy
Darwin Slept Here: Discovery, Adventure, and Swimming Iguanas in Charles Darwin's South America
By: Eric Simons
One snowy day in Ushuaia, Argentina, the self-proclaimed "southernmost city in the world," writer Eric Simons picked up a copy of Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. He had just hiked the mountains overlooking Beagle Channel, and found himself engrossed in Darwin's account. Like Simons, Darwin was in his mid-twenties when he traveled to South America. Simons followed Darwin further into the continent-to stand where Darwin had, and to explore the histories, legends and people that had fascinated the great scientist two centuries before. He trekked to as many of the locations Darwin wrote about as he could find, to see if he could view these places through Darwin's eyes, and to learn what South Americans know about Darwin. Innovative and amusing, Darwin Slept Here offers a new look at a familiar subject, by a fresh, compelling writer to watch.
Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile (Modern Library (Paperback))
By: Sara Wheeler
Squeezed between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide--not a country that lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler discovered when she traveled alone from the top to the bottom, from the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica. Eloquent, astute, nimble with history and deftly amusing, Travels in a Thin Country established Sara Wheeler as one of the very best travel writers in the world.
The Secret in Their Eyes
By: Eduardo Sacheri
Now a Major Motion Picture starring Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Chiwetel EijioforBenjamín Chaparro is a man haunted by his past—a retired detective, he remains obsessed with the decades-old case of the rape and murder of a young woman in her own bedroom. As he revisits the details of the investigation, he is reacquainted with his similarly long, unrequited love for Irene Hornos, then just an intern, now a respected judge. Absorbing and masterfully crafted, The Secret in Their Eyes is a meditation on the effects of the passage of time and unfulfilled desire.Eduardo Sacheri’s tale is imbued with the subdued terror that characterized the Dirty War of 1970s Argentina, and was made into the Academy Award winning film of the same name in 2009. Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, and Chiwetel Eijiofor now star in the English language depiction of this gripping story, to be released in the Fall of 2015.
Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Traveler's Literary Companions)
By: Brand: Whereabouts Press
The twenty stories in Chile: A Traveler's Literary Companion — most of which are available here for the first time in English — reveal that the nation that gave birth to two poets who won Nobel prizes in literature is also the home of many world-class prose writers. This collection evokes the diversity of the country's landscape and the complexity of its recent history. Contributors include Luis Alberto Acuña, Marjorie Agosín, Roberto Ampuero, Marta Brunet, Francisco Coloane, Adolfo Couve, José Donoso, Ariel Dorfman, Jorge Edwards, Beatriz García-Huidobro, Pedro Lemebel, Patricio Manns, Tito Matamala, Pablo Neruda, Darío Oses, Hernán Rivera Letelier, Patricio Riveros Olavarría, Osvaldo Rodríguez Musso, Enrique Valdés, and José Miguel Varas.
A Wildlife Guide to Chile (Helm Field Guides)
By: Sharon Chester
Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica.
By: Martin R. de la Peña, Maurice Rumboll
South America, though home to about one-third of the world's bird species and twice as many endemic families of birds as any other continent, has the world's sparsest population of birdwatchers. Birds of Southern South America and Antarctica illustrates and describes all the known species--more than 1,000 of them--in a vast swath of this underexplored birder's paradise, from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, southern Brazil, and Uruguay to parts of Antarctica. Just some of the birds it covers are teals, tinamous, chachalacas, conebills, cuckoos, macaws, parakeets, parrots, penguins, nightjars, hummingbirds, ovenbirds, tyrants, and tanagers. The habitats range from torrid rainforests and cloudforests to grasslands, the world's driest desert, second highest mountain range, and ice caps. The 97 color plates depict each species' male in breeding plumage, with the female and young often shown as well. On the facing page are concise textual descriptions of each species, highlighting not only salient physical features and behavioral patterns but the calls or songs of each. Casual birders and ornithologists contemplating a journey to the region, or simply interested in a one-volume overview of its bird life, will not want to miss this book.
History of the World Map by Map (DK History Map by Map)
By: DK
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Travel Insurance
For the convenience of our travelers, Smithsonian Journeys includes a basic medical expense and evacuation plan through Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand, at no additional charge. This plan provides post-departure Medical and Dental coverage of $250,000 per person and Emergency Assistance and Transportation coverage of $1,000,000 per person (U.S. Residents Only). Note: For full details regarding these coverages please review the following Plan Documents here.
In addition, we recommend that travelers purchase a travel protection plan to help protect their travel investment from unforeseen events such as cancellation due to illness, flight delays due to adverse weather, baggage loss, and more. For your convenience, Smithsonian Journeys offers an optional Travel Protection Plan administered by Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand. For those interested, optional "Cancel for Any Reason" coverage is available for an additional charge. Note: Certain eligibility requirements apply and Cancel for Any Reason coverage is not available to New York residents. For full details regarding this coverage please review the following Plan Documents here.
To learn more about the Travel Protection Plan, you may visit https://www.generalipartner.com/smithsonianjourneys or call the administrator, Trip Mate, a Generali Global Assistance & Insurance Services brand at (866) 501-3252.
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