Multi-trip South America: best prices?

Seanchai

We want to travelling from Ireland to South America, stopping in Washington DC, Havana, México City (Aztec civilisation), Baltra airport (Galápagos islands), Lima (Inca Civilisation), Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Santiago. We are hoping to spend a month on this trip. We wouldn't mind at all getting the train, but the train service seems to be non-existent.

We are going through the "round-the-world" options on various websites, but finding it hard to get prices. SkyTeam, OneWorld and Star Alliance are great at allowing me to plot my routes on their website, but impossible to get prices from. In a nutshell: we haven't a clue of the cost of our dream trip.

Does anybody have any suggestions for the best value prices for a trip like the above?

Thanks.

Zebra3

Try http://www.expedia.ie/ then "flights" then "multiple destinations".

Hope it's of some use.

Seanchai

Zebra3 wrote: »

Try http://www.expedia.ie/ then "flights" then "multiple destinations".

Hope it's of some use.

Expedia is invariably ridiculously expensive. I have never experienced good value with it. It was showing €861 per person for Dublin to Washington DC. Aer Lingus is showing, for the same dates in July, €561.11 per person. Thanks anyway.

schemingbohemia

Remember you can't fly from the US to Havana, you'll have to go via Mexico to do that. I wouldn't say expedia is always more expensive, but try the same multi-trip with ebookers.ie and opodo.co.uk

is there a trailfinders in belfast? maybe try there just to get a flavour of alternative routings/prices.

Also, you seem to be doing an awful lot of travelling, at least a quarter of your holiday will be taken up in airports or planes, i'd cut down on the trip if I were you, maybe leave out the US and do it separately another time.

Meathlass

Seanchai wrote: »

We want to travelling from Ireland to South America, stopping in Washington DC, Havana, México City (Aztec civilisation), Baltra airport (Galápagos islands), Lima (Inca Civilisation), Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Santiago. We are hoping to spend a month on this trip. We wouldn't mind at all getting the train, but the train service seems to be non-existent.
.

You're doubling back on yourself a lot op so that will make it hard to plot it. AFAIK only local Ecadour flights go to Baltra. Most people fly there on a return organised with the tour company from Quito or Quayaquil (sp). You also can't fly direct from DC to Havana. Have you gone in to USIT or Trailfinders to see what they think?

On another note I think this is a completely unrealistic trip for a month. I'm sure it can be done if you have the money but with 8 destinations that's about 3 days in each place. Take out at least 4 days of travelling (Ireland to DC, Buenos Aires to Ireland, and all the internal flights) and you're down to 2.5 days per destination.

I would recommend that you pick one side of the equator and do that e.g. Fly into Lima and over the course of a month travel overland from Lima, down into Chile, across to BA and home from Rio. Lufthansa and Iberia are usually good for going to south america but it will still be about 1,000 return.

steve-o

The best prices tend to be based on a return trip with a stopover normally allowed in each direction. So you can look for an "open jaw" trip to South America, with a stop in the US or Mexico (and skip Havana). So maybe Dublin-Washington-Lima, and Rio-Mexico-Dublin, though travelling though North America is the long way around.

Within South America you could use LAN Airpass to put together a route. To use it you must fly to/from South America on LAN or one of their partners. If you play around with different cities for the long haul and within South America you should find something that's affordable.

As previous posters have said, try a specialist travel agent and see what they can put together. I also agree that you might be trying to do too much for 1 month. You'll spend an awful lot of days travelling.