31570324

Is there a way to go from Santiago to Patagonia without paying about $400 for a return flight? Journey shouldn't take to long, they will only have two weeks in Chile/Argentina.
Any other advice what to see in less distance to Santiago in February?

JohnnyColombia

That would depend what you mean by "Patagonia" Chilean Patagonia is a devilishly long skinny bit of the world.

I am flying Santiago to Puerto Montt with LAN for CLP50.000 in a couple of weeks which is USD106 RT. Puerto Montt is the "La puerta de la entrada a la Patagonia chilena"

From Puerto Montt I am flying for the same price to Punta Arenas at the other end of Patagonia.

So that is about USD220 for 4 segments, no doubt it would be cheaper if you flew direct to PUQ but given you didn't say where you want to go exactly then I cannot be much more help

31570324

@JohnnyColombia: Thank you. I dont know exactly where they want to go, just got the information that they want to see Patagonia if its not to expensive.
This will be the first time that my parents visit south amercia and maybe the last time, too.
If I search on lan.com I couldn't find anything lower than $300 for a Return from SCL to PMC. Are there higher prices for foreigners?

JohnnyColombia

The bargains are on the LAN Chilean site, if you are looking at another country's site then you wont see them, if you are in the USA then you will need to go to the LANPASS forum and have a look for the info on how to access LAN Chile from the USA.

IaninDC

Agree with this. We got the 3 leg LAN pass for around US$400 which allowed us to fly SCL to Punta Arenas, El Calafate to Ushuaia, and Ushuaia to Bs.As. This trip included a 4 day detour to Torres del Paine NP in Chile, which is about as Patagonian as you can get.

31570324

Thank you. May brother is in Chile now, so he should see the cheaper prices, yes? I will ask him. Will they debit the difference to the foreigner price when they recognize that the passangers are non-locals?

Eastbay1K

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9650; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.8+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0.0.524 Mobile Safari/534.8+)

Chile pricing is point of sale, not point of residency.

31570324

Thank you ^

carbonaddict

Sky Airlines also flies to both Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales (nearer to Torres de Paine) and seems to have more reasonable fares for non Chileans than LAN. See https://www.skyairline.cl/en/index.aspx. I asked about its safety in another thread in the South America section and feedback was that it's OK. They also do a Coyhaique-Punta Arenas hop which would allow access to another interesting part of Southern Chile with hot springs, hiking etc.

If you have more time you can also take Navimag ferry Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, or even take an expensive but well reviewed cruise to the San Rafael Glacier from either: http://www.skorpios.cl/EN/.

One general point to note is intermittent disruption in Chile and Argentina from volcanic ash - allow some contingency time in your plans for this.

Pentech

You can also use British Airways Avios miles for roundtrip from SCL-PUQ. It is 10,000 Avios points each way (for 20K RT). I've also seen BA offer cash and points option for 10K + ~$180 (all-in).

IaninDC

We did the 3-leg LAN Airpass and went from SCL>PUQ, FTE>USH, and USH>AEP all for a little over US$400 bucks. LAN didn't even check to see if we were flying in on an AA/partner flight.