This is the trip of a lifetime!

I had posted this trip earlier and I am reposting it so that people can sign up again. Plus the meetup posting format changed since the posting of this trip to HTML. 

In my original posting I had written the stuff below but I think instead of backpacking so many times a few people might want to add variety to the trip and do some rafting and rock climbing or day hiking which is fine by me. We don't always need to stick together and there are way too many sports out there to monopolize the group. I would like to backpack at least twice. I will work on a bare bones itinerary around October once I have a good idea on what to do. 

I have also moved the trip to mid-March so that I don't have to miss out on the winter here too much and to avoid the crowds. Plus we will get to see the foliage in Patagonia!

My plan is to spend two and half weeks traveling in Chile and Argentina. We will fly in to Santiago, Chile, take the bus to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. Backpack for 3 days. Then take another bus to Torres del Paine. Backpack for another 3 or 4 days.

Take another bus, go to Tierra del Fuego, visit Ushuaia (the southernmost city in the world), do some sightseeing, find another park to backpack and then go to Buenos Aires for a day or two. Hang out there, maybe go to the beach in Uruguay and fly back to the US. 

It will be the summer/fall down in Argentina and Chile. You will have to have backpacked with me before the trip for at least two nights in order to come. But there will plenty of those trips between now and Feb 11, 2012.

This will probably be one of the coolest trips ever and won't be very expensive. I plan on staying at hostel and taking plenty of chicken buses. I am a native Spanish speaker so at least one of us will be able to communicate with the locals and find good deals. Flights should be about $1200 which includes a flight from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires. Not taking the bus from Ushuaia.

After that food, shelter and transportation will probably run us between $500 to $800. So figure in between $1700 and $2000.

I am aiming for the lower end. I am not picky on where I stay or how I get there.

If you are, then this is not the trip for you. But if you are easy going and want to have an awesome time then welcome. There is a reciprocal visa fee between Argentina, Chile and the US that is about $125 per country. Laws change all the time so by 2012 who knows. If you have another passport then you probably won't get assessed a fee.

Ushuaia