Argentina, Brazil Tour

I initially planned a long 6-week trip through Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, but watered this down to 9 days in Brazil and 5 days in Buenos Aires. I picked Latin Discoveries (and will recommend friends to do so) because I love how it is very flexible - I can customize my own itinerary to exactly the time/ locations etc of where I want to be or what I want to do without wasting time on fixed / planned agency tours which may bring me to places I have no interest in. I worked mainly with Nathalia for almost 1.5-2 mths on the plan - where she was the Brazil planner and overall coordinator. On the Argentina side, I worked with Thomas initially (he left, then Daniela) as the Buenos Aires planner. Nathalia have been really patient and professional, and for the most part, very responsive to my queries and have been able to give good advice. I largely planned the itinerary on my own, booked my own accoms and flights, and engaged Latin Discoveries to provide jut the tour / driver / guide services. My experience in Brazil was excellent and beyond expectations - cars used to pick me were generally very new and of good condition (except for the ones provided by a 3rd party IGT tours in Iguazu, where I find both the guide and the car just average), and the local guides which Nathalia works with generally speak good English. I would strongly recommend anyone visiting attraction sites in Brazil to engage a local guide - the guides I was with all have their networks with other tour providers / attraction sites' staff, allowing me to skip long queues buying entry tickets / entering sites - and it felt very much like a VIP experience. All the guides were also very accommodating to whatever I needed. Everything went on really smoothly, and I was impressed with my time in Brazil. The Buenos Aires (BA) leg of planning, unfortunately, is what will contribute to the negative part of this review. As it was a city, I requested only for guide / driver services but was told by Thomas they cannot do only this and so I will need to also join some tour with Latin Discoveries. And so I did for the first 2 days - 2 city day tours, a Rojo Tango show at night, and a Tigre Tour. The rest of the 3 days I booked my own tours online/ did my own F&E. It was on hindsight that I checked the costs of the tours I did with Latin Discoveries after I paid them for the entire trip, and realized that I am paying slightly more for the 5 days in Argentina than my 9 days in Brazil. I engaged them just for 4 tours in total, and 3 days of private pickup / guide services. I feedback many times that I felt overcharged, and they did try to make some changes to offset a better experience in Brazil for me. However, the feeling that I was being overcharged for BA for a cost level I still did not understand left a bitter taste in my mouth. Thomas also left just a week or two before I was about to fly - which I felt added on to the negative experience as there was constant delayed communication and several last minute changes here and there. Overall, I will highly recommend travelers who are planning trips to get a feel of tour costs online ahead of making payments to ensure that the margin is reasonable, especially for city areas like BA where one can easily uber / taxi (the subway card was a little challenging to buy) and where you have plenty of cheaper tour options online to join. For long distance drives / trips to countries where public transport is challenging (eg in Brazil as above), I highly deem Latin Discoveries a valuable partner to work with. I only hope that they look into ideally providing meals for full-day tours, as generally, they are not provided.

Everything was just perfect:

1. Every driver was on time (early even), professional, reliable and welcoming. It is truly so relieving to arrive in a new place and have someone waiting for you.

2. The three guides (Julien, Wesley and Fabian) was so knowledgeable, kind, helpful, curious and engaging. They really seemed to love their jobs and their cities, and made our trip so much better. I really cannot tell you enough about how wonderful they were. From the moment we met Julien and he checked us in early to the hotel to our final hours with Fabian, it was a fantastic experience.

3. The hotels were very lovely, especially the two in Brazil. The Arena Leme was simply perfect, with beautiful views and great accommodations. The Samna was so relaxing and beautiful. The Grand Brizo was very business-y but in a central location.

4. The activities were perfect. In addition to the main tours of the locations (Rio's beaches, the Brazilian and Argentinian falls, the Recoleta and the Boca neighborhoods), we thoroughly enjoyed the train ride to Christ the Redeemer, the stadium, the bird park, the Rafain show and the Tango show.

5. The food was pretty good, some places better than others. The breakfasts at all three hotels was excellent. And I'm shocked to report that no one ever had any stomach issues at all (we haven't had such luck other places). The dinner at Rojo Tango was particularly good.

We had a good trip and appreciate the excursions set up by Latin Discoveries which were overall very good. However, we had the following problems. 1. We asked in advance, but were not told by our agent about the difficulty for getting cash in Buenos Aires for tips. Other tourists we talked to said their travel agency informed them about the problems of getting cash and recommended that they bring US dollars. We wish we had been told this... would have saved us alot of money in ATM fees because the ATM fees were high and the amount of disbursement was limited which meant we were always looking for and had to pay the fee an ATM machine to get cash for tips. 2. We were told that our guide would help us get a sim card for our phones but, neither our guide or the hotel was able to help with this. We spent alot of time trying to get our phones to work in Argentina and would have appreciated better advice from our agent, namely to get our phones set up before we left for home. 3. There was a lot of confusing information about our trip at Iguazu Falls. Apparently, our agent was not aware of how we were supposed to do the tours from the on property Gran Melia and kept giving us information that conflicted with our driver. In addition, our driver's English proficiency was VERY limited which made things more complicated. This, of course, was problematic. 4. All of our concerns/problems could have been avoided if the Latin Discoveries Argentina agent was more attentive to the routine needs of travelers. Please note that we had great drivers in Buenos Aires and Rio and the Iguazu driver was very nice and tried hard but just wasn't able to speak English very well. The trip was laid out very well, our accommodations were good, and the South American flights were done very well. Latin Discoveries seems to have good contacts with local tourist guides for drivers and the various excursions which they booked for us which were all great.