Shopping for a tour

After lunch, we went around the main street looking for tour operators to take us to the different places nearby. The one and the main thing to do nearby was the massive Perito Morano glacier wall and not much else. So, according to the draft plan, we needed to be here just 2 days but we decided to continue 2 more days till 30th Jan when Melinda had her return flight from El Calafate only.
Melinda had wanted to return at the end of Jan and her return flight to Stockholm was booked from Lima since we had hoped to be in Peru by end of Jan. Due to the unforeseen delays in Patagonia, we still hadn't reached the Southernmost we wanted to go. So, to reach Lima, she would need to reach either Santiago or Buenos Aires for a connection. Since, we were still in Argentina, the cheapest option had been for her to fly to Buenos Aires and then via Uruguay to Lima. But to fly to Buenos Aires, the only airport in this region was in El Calafate where we were now.
All the tour operators we went to had almost the same prices for the individual tours but, if combined with others, some were ready to drop the price a bit. Then, there was the issue of payment by cash only. The ones we found were the cheapest in the combination prices, didn't accept cards or asked for upto 20% extra if paying by card. We were always levied a charge for cash withdrawal in Argentina so we would prefer card payments instead. It was a mess but we wanted to find out about all the possible combinations. By now, the girls had lost their patience so we left them at one of the local shopping street and went around from shop to shop noting down the prices individually and in combination, with and without card payments.
Finally, we managed to book 2 tours, one for the Perito Morano glacier for the next day and the 'Rios de Hielo' (Rivers of Ice) for the day after and then half a day on 30th to do the nearby cave with old paintings.
Another thing that we decided was to stop our travel further south since then we would not be able to make it to Barranquilla (Colombia) in time for the carnival between 7-14 Feb. So, we too started looking for options to fly from El Calafate up Northwards via Iguazu on the Argentina - Brazil border to Colombia.Read more