micheleandtom.com

1. Make sure all ropa blanca is included — towels, blankets, sheets, pillowcases. Sounds funny, but after our Punta del Diablo experience, we learned to scan for towels and check for sheets immediately upon entering a room or a cabin.
2. Breakfast Monotony. Prepare yourself for the fact that hotel or cabin-included breakfast will be exactly the same everywhere you go in the country. I am not exaggerating. Of course, I love the medialunas (little sweetened croissants), rolls, jam, butter, coffee, and fresh orange juice. What wore me down after awhile was the same slimy tasteless piece of Oscar Meyer-like deli ham, folded in half, next to the same slice of tasteless white cheese, folded in half. (Fresh fruit salad does appear occasionally, but know that you are hitting the jackpot if you get some!)
3. Travel with cash. Many places don’t take credit cards and ATMs aren’t always available. (Poor Tom had a money belt with about a zillion Argentine pesos in it by the end of our trip because we had to hoard cash to pay for our apartment up front when we returned to Buenos Aires. It was quite a brick to pack around in a money belt. Needless to say, he got really tired of me saying, “is that your money belt, or are you just happy to see me?”)
4. Barking in Bariloche. The dogs in Bariloche are spoiled outdoor dogs that bark at everything all day and all night long. If you read an online review of a cabin/house/hotel that mentions dogs barking, heed their advice and stay somewhere else, because when we were there, it sounded like we had six rabid dogs chained in our bedroom every night.
5. Travelers checks, if you need to cash ’em, hop over to Chile. Travelers checks are about as valuable as toilet paper in Argentina, but you can really rock them in Chile.
6. When in southern Patagonia, fly if you can afford it. The bus rides are long, slow, and in our case, either really really hot (traveling sweat lodge) or smelled like we had our head stuck down an outhouse for the entire ride. Many of the roads are not paved, and traveling over gravel for long periods of time on a bus can make even the most iron stomach get a little queasy.
7. Control thy thermostat. You may want to note who controls the heat in the hotel/cabin you are renting if you are traveling to the colder climes of the south. (Ironically, our issue was that the rooms were sweltering!)
8. Internet/WiFi reliability in the more remote parts of southern Argentina really fluctuates during prime time. Our experience was that access practically disappeared from late afternoon until late evening every day, so plan accordingly. Also, some locales only have satellite connectivity, so you don’t have the juice to Skype, stream, or move large files.
9. Bring toilet paper and alcohol gel on long bus trips. (Click here for our other bus tips.)

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