El Cheapo is Still in Charge

Plotnik understands the reasons people grab on to tours when they travel. They do all your work for you, pick up your luggage at the front door of your plush hotel, escort you to the van and hurry you to your next destination, all in an atmosphere of preferential treatment. They bow and call you Mister and if you sneeze they say God Bless You.

Or so it is said. Plot and Duck have never taken one of these package tours, because it seems to them that tour companies also take you where they want to take you, spend as much time when they get there as they want and are always hustling you forward to meet the demands of their next camera-ready opportunity. And the people you meet on these tours are the same people you left back home. Opportunity for snapshots: Many. Opportunity for growth: Zero.

And you pay through the nose for the chance to let somebody else be your daddy.

All that said, Plotnik is having a hell of a time trying to figure out where to go and what to do in Patagonia, an area larger than the USA where many of the distances look short on the map, except for that mountain range of 22,000 foot peaks standing in the way, and the windy mountain roads that accompany them, and the glaciers over here and the volcanoes over there.

He'd love to take a tour. But he is just 'way 'way 'way too cheap. And February-March up here is July-August down there so it's busy season for outdoorsy people. Everyone is trekking, hiking, climbing, rafting, diving, jumping, sailing and biking while Plot and Duck want to do a little of that but also plenty of walking, sitting, tasting, ambling, listening, maybe some dancing, maybe some museum-ing, and they wouldn't mind sleeping in a bed instead of on an overnight bus.

But you have to take overnight buses if you want to keep your costs down and cover these ungodly distances. Plotnik's experience with overnight Latino buses is there is a video called "Jesus Eats Vampire Mary" blasting at full volume all night long and when that one finishes they put on "Bruce Lee vs. Armando Gonzalez Gonzales."

Not complaining here, only remarking. The Plotniks' airline tickets are practically free, due to Ducknik's service to Mother Bank and all the traveling she did for so many years, but those miles are depleted and this may be the last big one for next to nothing.

(OK, the tickets are not totally free, but it only costs $100 each in taxes to go from SFO-Toronto-Santiago and then Buenos Aires-Toronto-SFO.)

(It would have been nice to avoid the Toronto part, for sure. But that's the route you get when your frequent flier miles are with United and United doesn't fly to Santiago. Their partner Air Canada does.)

(United does fly directly to Buenos Aires, but through Dulles, so that's not much help. And anyway United allots one frequent flier seat per plane to their Buenos Aires flight and that seat is booked until 2018. So you gotta use partners.)

Since the airline tickets are so cheap, there is a temptation to say "Oh, hell. We've never taken a tour in our lives. We've never been on a cruise. We've never spent the biggo buckos to see or go anywhere. So maybe it's time. Maybe we need a guided itinerary to travel thousands of miles in and out of volcanoes and glaciers?

Maybe, but El Cheapo is still in charge here. Overnight bus to small cafe to self-guided walking tour to blog posting spot to guitar store. Local minivan to central market to spice market to museum of aboriginal history to lunch counter to drug store for stomach disorder pills and cough syrup to hostel to take nap to cafe somebody's sister told us about to bridge to take picture back to hostel.

When you travel like this you meet fascinating, cheap, opinionated people like yourselves, usually from other countries. Often you meet them where you're buying the immodium.