Anyone with some travel experience knows that unforeseen issues are part of traveling experience; excellent planning cannot prevent all these surprises.
Since I did not have any time to plan for this South America trip, I booked two tour packages (this is my first tour package vacation). The first (American) tour agency took care of all the planning from Rio to Santiago. The second (Chilean) tour agency took care of the planning from Santiago to Patagonia. We are at Santiago right now and the first part of our tour ends tonight. We are taking the 2:45AM flight to Punta Arenas for our Patagonia trip.
The booking of the second package has been an unexpected nightmare. I thought all I needed to do is gave my credit card number; as I had done for the first tour package. Instead, I emailed the Chilean travel agent daily while I was traveling from Rio to Santiago and called her several times today for our flight information. Six hours before our flight departure time, she informed me that her assistant mistakenly charged other people´s flights on my credit card and the tickets for our flights were still unpaid. I ended up had to call the Lan Chile to pay for the three tickets. The travel agent promised to fix the error and refund the erroneous charge so I would be paying just tthe previously-agreed tour package price.
What a headache!
Hopefully the remainder of the trip will be great and the travel agent will fix the error in a timely manner.
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