Help with plans pre-cruise Santiago Chile

If you will tell me your experiences arriving the day prior to cruise leaving Santiago Chile? Not sure where to stay? Difficulty getting transportation if we stay near airport? Possible ways to fill time once we arrive if we were to stay near airport? Any advise is much appreciated.

I suggest posting these questions on the South America Ports of Call Forum also: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=76.

Since the SA cruising seasnon is wrapping up you whould be able to get a number of current suggestions and reviews. You can also use the search function for info on Santiago hotels, transportation and excursions.

We chose to stay in Valpariso rather than Santiago for a night pre-cruise. We wanted to get all of the travel out of the way first. Can't remember the name of the hotel unfortunately, but it was up on one of the hills overlooking the city and the harbor. Small, and very nice, only about 10 rooms.A nice breakfast buffet was included in the price of the room. Hotel staff was great!

The travel from Santiagp to Valpariso is about an hour and a half on very good roads. Our hotel arranged for a car to meet us at the airport in Santiago and take us to Valpo. We had the same driver come back to transport us to the pier the following morning,

Valpo is an interesting city with lots of street art and history.

Pasted below is an except for our trip log for our arrival in Santiago airport, transfer to Valparasio, and boarding our ship. This was in December of 2015.

We were on the curb of the Santiago airport at 7:02 AM,having just missed the 7:00 bus. By thetime the 7:20 bus came there was quite a line of people waiting. We certainly had the most luggage with onelarge case each and one carry-on size case each. We followed the instructions on cruise criticand got off at the Pajaritos station. Abus from one of the companies was boarding for Valparaiso so I bought twotickets for that bus. All four of ourcases were checked and stored below. At9:10 we got off the bus in Valparaiso, found a taxi that confirmed he uses themeter, and we were at the Hotel Ibis by 9:20. The taxi fare was about Five USD (paid in pesos of course).

The Hotel Ibis is interesting. On the plus side, you can’t beat theprice. With early reservations, the costwas less than USD 50 a night for two people including breakfast the nextmorning. The other plus is that theywere able to give us a room right away (well – it took nearly 30 minutes to getto the check in desk…). The hotel is‘bare bones.’ There were just two towelsin the bath, one tiny soap bar, one tiny shampoo bottle, and almost nofurniture in the room besides the bed and one chair. There is a built-in desk and sitting chairalso. I was able to get more towels andtoiletries.

We wondered the nearby town a bit but found ourselves in an areathat seemed desolate. We found out whylater. We eventually tried a small caféfor lunch. The food was good, butdifferent (despite the English translation on the menu). What they call a “Crab cake” is more like acrab stew with cheese on top. Still,they treated us right and the bill was reasonable.

We returned to our room to rest up a bit before our 3:00reservation with “Tours for tips.” Wewere given a very good walking tour, and truly enjoyed it. Valparaiso is built on “45 hills” and while goingup was pretty easy using the funicular (from 1902), once on top there were alot of ups and downs sometimes with stairs. As my dear wife (DW) is recovering from knee replacement surgery justthree months ago, this proved to be a bit much. Still, she is a trooper and until we needed to walk down an incredibleamount of steps due to a funicular being closed for repair we really enjoyedthe tour.

After the descent, we bid our farewell to the tour guide andheaded back to the Ibis. We found thatthere is a ‘food court’ above the train station that is part of the samebuilding the Ibis occupies. A burgereach took the hunger away. There is alsoa supermarket in the building and that proved a great place to buy two verylarge water bottles at supermarket pricing. After that we called it a day and crashed as we had little sleep thenight before.

Overall Valparasio as a place to visit is a 5out of 10, based on our limited experience. It’s actually pretty dirty a city and did not live up to the National Geographicrecommendation that led us to forgo Santiago today.

Sunday, December 20, 2015 – Embarkation

Give the Ibis a little more credit as we slept like rocksfrom 8:00 PM until 7:30 AM. The bed andpillows were very comfortable. We hadbreakfast at the Ibis buffet. It wasjust okay. The typical Hampton isbetter. After breakfast I walked to thenearby supermarket for a small package of antiseptic wipes as DW wanted to wifedown her cane once we got to the ship. We also used them to wipe down the hard surfaces in the cabin.

At 10:25 I called to check out and we headed to the taxistand. A waiting taxi was happy to loadour luggage and take us to the port terminal. Well, kind of. On the plus side,the meter was just 5000 pesos (about $7) but after stopping “In front of” butnot at the cruise terminal the driver (thru another driver that spoke English)said “Just across these tracks is the terminal, there is too much of a line toget in.”

That is great except that I had to drag 125 lbs. of luggage“Across the tracks” and then about another block to actually reach theterminal. DW did not wear “Walkingshoes” as we did not expect to do any walking. That was very wrong as even after quickly checking in (maybe a fiveminute wait) we were told “Walk down to the other end and the bus will take youto the ship.” What looked like the‘other end’ was a good 100 yards away. But that wasn’t the end. Then wewalked past the Seaborne and Celebrity check in areas, and then there was along line for a single security checkpoint.

After security, it was just a short walk furtherwhere guests were directed to the proper bus for their ship. By now DW was really hurting. The bus ride through the port seemed to takea very long time. We reached the Zaandamat last at about 11:25. The boardingramp was long and steep, but we made it!

If you will tell me your experiences arriving the day prior to cruise leaving Santiago Chile? Not sure where to stay? Difficulty getting transportation if we stay near airport? Possible ways to fill time once we arrive if we were to stay near airport? Any advise is much appreciated.

We arrived in Santiago 1/15/17 for 1/18 Crown Princess Departure going to Buenos Aires (2 days prior to embark). We used Chile Fun Tours, Fernando Ulloa specifically, as our tour guide, who picked us up at the Santiago Airport at 7:30 AM, toured us throughout Santiago and Chile wine country ( had a boutique wine tasting), then dropped us 6:30 PM at the Ibis Hotel in Valparaiso. On 1/16/17 Fernando Ulloa picked us up at Ibis Hotel and toured us throughout Valparaiso, and the two beach towns of Vina del Mar and Con Con. He did a fabulous job and we saw a great deal of that major area of Chile before boarding the Crown Princess on 1/18/17. Contact via e-mail to chilefuntour@gmail.com. As we did, you'll likely receive a prompt reply and an exceptional willingness to fine tune tours to your specific needs. Or, visit the Chile Fun Tours website via Google. This is highly recommended.