I tried booking a different hotel for the original dates with hoteltravel.com, no, that's full too. I've just whacked in yet another request with them for a different hotel, so we can go through this again. I was going to leave it since it's 6pm on Friday now, but then I figure their staff are probably in the US and the hotel itself is even further west, so just maybe I'll get an answer one way or another before the weekend proper starts.
If that doesn't work, I'll just have to start digging around a bit more. There's one hotel on hoteltravel.com I haven't tried booking via them, but I think it's full because the sites which do on-line reservations don't show it as having any vacancies. tripadvisor.com has 20-odd Easter Island hotels listed, so I guess there are other options to consider. Now that I'm assured by a friend who has looked into it that there's nothing worse than black widows among the island's spider population (they might be poisonous, but they're not enormous, which is what counts) I am prepared to take a gamble on potentially more primitive accommodation if need be.
Didn't do anything this afternoon after lunch, it was already 5pm when I left the bar. I bought another book from the guy in the street - he wanted CLP3000 but since I genuinely only had CLP2000, he sold it me for that - and took some cash out then popped back here to drop my camera and most of the cash off. I plan to go out and have a couple (yes, just a couple) of beers at some local place, then come back here and go out again later about 9pm to see what it's like here on a Friday night.
Showing posts with label chile easter island plans preparation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chile easter island plans preparation. Show all posts
Friday, 29 January 2010
Monday, 18 January 2010
Easter Island
Well, this seems almost too easy.
Having thought about it, regarding my flights as fixed points in time (even if they're flexible in theory, I kind of want to stick to the original time allocation), I either want to go to Easter Island shortly after I first fly into Santiago or before I fly out (to Buenos Aires). Otherwise it makes planning everything else harder, as I have a fixed set of dates in the middle of my otherwise open time window.
And while I would kind of preferred to have gone sooner rather than later (as it would fill in time before going down to Tierra del Fuego, which isn't happening as soon as I'd originally thought because of problems with the ferry I want to take while I'm down there), it looks like I've left it too late to go at any decent kind of price then - expedia.co.uk is showing roughly a grand for flights alone.
So I want to go just before I fly out of Santiago on Wednesday 31st March. Messing around on expedia.co.uk (I should hunt around for cheaper options before I actually book, but I figure this is a good first approximation), it seems that I can fly out from Santiago to Hanga Roa (IPC) on Wednesday 24th March and back on Tuesday 30th March for £370, which isn't too bad. I guess I'd stay in a hotel near Santiago airport that night as I have to fly out at 10:25 the next morning.
That's perhaps slightly too much time there (and maybe leaves me open to the risk of missing my flight on to Buenos Aires if there's a problem flying back from Easter Island to Santiago), but if I fly back on Monday 29th March the only flight leaves Easter Island at 7pm and arrives at Santiago at 2am on Tuesday 30th March. So it's not as if I get an extra 'full' day in Santiago and it's just awkward and stressful all round. I might prefer to fly out on Thursday 25th March, but there don't seem to be any flights then.
So that gives me six nights out there, which should certainly be enough, and it just slots in nicely before I fly on, leaving me as much flexibility to arrange the rest of my time in Chile as possible.
And it seems that hoteltravel.com can book me a room online with no fuss at the apparently fairly nice Taha Tai hotel for $149/night, which is not cheap but isn't the end of the world.
I haven't booked anything yet, I'm going to sleep on it and assume that this is sufficiently far into the future prices and availability won't change in the next day or two. But I'll probably book tomorrow unless I have second thoughts.
If only Tierra del Fuego were this simple...
Having thought about it, regarding my flights as fixed points in time (even if they're flexible in theory, I kind of want to stick to the original time allocation), I either want to go to Easter Island shortly after I first fly into Santiago or before I fly out (to Buenos Aires). Otherwise it makes planning everything else harder, as I have a fixed set of dates in the middle of my otherwise open time window.
And while I would kind of preferred to have gone sooner rather than later (as it would fill in time before going down to Tierra del Fuego, which isn't happening as soon as I'd originally thought because of problems with the ferry I want to take while I'm down there), it looks like I've left it too late to go at any decent kind of price then - expedia.co.uk is showing roughly a grand for flights alone.
So I want to go just before I fly out of Santiago on Wednesday 31st March. Messing around on expedia.co.uk (I should hunt around for cheaper options before I actually book, but I figure this is a good first approximation), it seems that I can fly out from Santiago to Hanga Roa (IPC) on Wednesday 24th March and back on Tuesday 30th March for £370, which isn't too bad. I guess I'd stay in a hotel near Santiago airport that night as I have to fly out at 10:25 the next morning.
That's perhaps slightly too much time there (and maybe leaves me open to the risk of missing my flight on to Buenos Aires if there's a problem flying back from Easter Island to Santiago), but if I fly back on Monday 29th March the only flight leaves Easter Island at 7pm and arrives at Santiago at 2am on Tuesday 30th March. So it's not as if I get an extra 'full' day in Santiago and it's just awkward and stressful all round. I might prefer to fly out on Thursday 25th March, but there don't seem to be any flights then.
So that gives me six nights out there, which should certainly be enough, and it just slots in nicely before I fly on, leaving me as much flexibility to arrange the rest of my time in Chile as possible.
And it seems that hoteltravel.com can book me a room online with no fuss at the apparently fairly nice Taha Tai hotel for $149/night, which is not cheap but isn't the end of the world.
I haven't booked anything yet, I'm going to sleep on it and assume that this is sufficiently far into the future prices and availability won't change in the next day or two. But I'll probably book tomorrow unless I have second thoughts.
If only Tierra del Fuego were this simple...
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