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Santiago to Valparaiso


Miss Jolly
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We would like advice please as to whether we should book a combined tour/transfer from Santiago, Vina Del Mar to Valparaiso ($158pp with South Excursions) or to take the much less expensive alternative of Celebrity pre-cruise transfer from Santiago to Valparaiso.Could we perhaps look around Santiago independently as we would have a couple of nights at The Santiago Park Plaza Hotel? Our cruiseline transfers for pre- and post cruise totals $92pp and we do need the transfer post cruise from The Port of Miami to Fort Lauderdale Airport. We had hoped to have others from our roll call join us on the South Excursions tour and thus reduce the price as well as making friends pre-cruise, however, there have been no takers as yet.

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Santiago is a large, relatively prosperous city with a long history, many impressive historical buildings, and many sites of interest to most tourists. It would be well worth spending at least a couple of days (or preferably longer) seeing the sights in Santiago before joining your cruise at Valpo. At least in daytime, we found Santiago to be easy to get around on our own on foot, and also via the modern subway system when we needed to travel significant distances. I believe there is also a HoHo bus (we did not use that). We did book a half day private tour of Santiago with About Chile for our first half day in the city, and that was useful to get our bearings and an overview of the very interesting history.

 

That said, Valparaiso is also an interesting and colourful place, and it is well worth spending at least a few hours touring that much smaller, quite different (and quite hilly) city. With just a few hours in Valpo, having a tour guide and vehicle is (I think) desirable. If you simply take the cruise line transfer from Santiago to the ship, you will not get much of a look at Valpo. We were very happy with a combined walking-and-driving tour of Valpo and Vina del Mar, plus transfer to Santiago, that we arranged via About Chile when we disembarked in Valpo in Feb. 2013. They also run that tour-and-transfer in the opposite direction, and their price for a private tour/transfer for just two people (at least in Feb.'13) was somewhat lower than you mentioned.

 

Unfortunately, you will have to make a tradeoff between time in Santiago and time for a tour of Valpo (and Vina). Two days is not sufficient to see even the highlights of both places...

 

John

Edited by J-D
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Since when are they selling transfers from Santiago to Valparaiso?

 

We sail in January 2014 and the website (last time I checked) indicated that no transfers were available.

 

I telephoned them and found out that there were transfers available but was then instructed to have my TA call them about prices and then I was to find out prices from him.

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