South American travel specialist, Chimu Adventures, overhauled its entire South America product offering to fit under their newly launched style – a range of premium itineraries that highlight each region.
Chimu aims to showcase ‘Signature South America’ with flexible travel itineraries that have been refined, simplified, and worked on by its team over the last eight months.
Chimu retained much of its staff throughout the pandemic and used this time to brainstorm ideas for its new itineraries.
Travellers can select from one of Chimu’s six Signature South America itineraries (Machu Picchu, Galapagos, Patagonia, Buenos Aires to Rio, Salt Flats or the full South American Circle) and can tailor their itinerary with extensions before or after their tour.
Chimu has gone against the grain when planning day tours, ensuring guests visit popular destinations at different times of day than other tour operators to reduce the impact of mass tourism.
In a release, Chimu said that it has designed each itinerary so that travellers can properly discover the history, culture, and cuisine of the region.
The tour company said that guests can feel overwhelmed when planning South American travel, due to its vast geographical size, lending to logistical issues, which is why they have stepped away from being fully tailor made and have designed and perfected their itineraries to be as simple as possible.
Departure dates are chosen by guests, with departures guaranteed. Each itinerary includes support from Chimu’s local offices, and they arrange all of the travel logistics, including private airport transfers, English-speaking support and sightseeing guides, superior, hand-picked accommodation, and some meals.
Guests can combine itineraries or book extra add-ons, such as a Lake Titicaca Extension or Amazon River Cruising alongside Signature Peru.
“Taking advantage of our induced ‘pause’ over the pandemic has allowed us to completely overhaul what we offer in South America”, said Chimu’s product manager Ben Goschnick.
“We have taken into consideration what the vast majority of our travellers have booked over past few decades, the itinerary highlights that have brought the most joy and the most effective way of traversing this enormous continent without joining a group tour.
“Everything from hotel locations, day tours, duration and local bars/restaurants have all been carefully considered to craft and perfect our Signature range, as such, we feel we have produced the ultimate series of itineraries to showcase South America in comfort, whilst maintaining flexibility for our travellers”, Goschnick said.
LATAM Airlines resumed service from Sydney to Santiago via Auckland in late March, with more routes coming soon.
“Having just returned from my first trip to South America since 2020, it was very exciting to spend some more time in some of our signature hotels, prior to our clients starting to arrive,” said Chimu Adventures co-founder Chad Carey.
“I can confidently report that they are operating as normal and ready for Australians to start arriving”,