I Chose Latin America for Less (LAFL)

My Latin America trip went like this :
Singapore - Sao Paulo - Rio - Iguazu - Buenos Aires - Lima - Cusco - Lima - Sao Paulo - Singapore

Personally, this kind of arrangement needed a whole lot of commitment if I did this on my own and without Latin America for Less (LAFL), there was absolutely no chance of this happening within this year. To the wonderful team @Richard,Matt&Amanda - thank you ALL so very very much for taking care of us!

Here are MY reasons why I chose to do my trip with Latin America for Less (and I'm so glad I did!)

Reason 1: No-Sweat Logistics
I wanted to visit more than one city in Latin America. This means, I need to get my arse across multiple cities, multiple airports, different flights and hotels. Unless, you have the time to do hours of research online, to select WHICH hotel, WHICH airport and WHICH flight bookings you will make. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, you still need to figure out HOW the daily logistics, how to see the sights you want et cetera.

I’m never 100% sure if the hotel I’ve seen on TripAdvisor is all as it seems. I recalled a certain budget hotel I booked myself for my stay in Limmat, Zurich. It had decent reviews on TripAdvisor but when I actually got there, it was quite horrendous and I was unable to change elsewhere as the entire stretch of hotels at the Limmat area were fully booked at the time of my visit.

With LAFL, they take this kind of nonsensical worry out of your hands.

Reason 2: No-Hassle with Local blahhh Agencies

I've actually done alot of research before LAFL. I visited the STA (student travel) office in Bugis, the Contiki office and called the high-end ones at Beach Road. I felt STA was abit too tiring for me since it was mostly backpacking tours (been there, done that, not now thanks). Contiki staff made me more confused since they don’t offer any standard programs for Latin America. Also the staff at the Contiki office here in Singapore just don’t have the time for you because majority of their customers want Europe – not Latin America. 

 

Same thing with the high-end ones, most just don’t do Latin America – and even if they do, they will tell you they want at least 10 persons to organize the trip (sorry, I don’t know 10 people all at once crazy enough wanting to go on a trip with me, that’s just impossible) If you ask me, I think the local agencies are missing out on this slice of the pie – there are people like me here in Singapore and Malaysia, wanting to experience the best of Latin America and we most certainly don’t want to be in a huge tour group in order to do this!

Reason 3: You feed your Kiasu-ism

For a person as kiasu as me (kiasu: local slang meaning the fear of missing out on a good thing), LAFL gave me so much confidence for doing this trip with them and they had so much patience when we worked out the preliminary logistics together. I can honestly say they tried their absolute darnest to get me the BEST of everything, working within my personal budget but within reasonable expectations. My hats off to them - they made sure every location I visited went off like clockwork, everything was synchronized to the trip itinerary and that was simply amazing.

Reason 4: Safety

Safety, I was obviously very concerned for my safety since coming from Asia – I am aware of all the going-ons of petty crimes and I expected Latin America the same. Online forums about safety in Brazil were not very positive, so I was understandably worried. I asked my travel planner so many questions that I was impressed that they actually never asked me to shut up. I appreciated that they were so professional about this.

My experience coming off Latin America is yes, you do have to exercise a higher level of caution overall. Having a travel planner helps you because they know which hotels to put you at, they know how to arrange and book the key tours for you and generally get you from point A-Z reasonably well. That all being said - you do, however still have to exercise your own vigilance.

Reason 5: LAFL just rocXx okay

Initially, I was quite apprehensive to enlist a travel planner located abroad. This means the main form of communication would be via emails and all transactions - payments for flights et cetera had to be done online. And so, being the sceptical little me - my initial interactions with them were so careful that really, if I were an LAFL staff ... I think I would be so pissed off by me!

Nothing of that sort happened. LAFL was simply stellar. I did not come away feeling that I was being scrutinized or judged. I ABSOLUTELY 100% believe from their actions that LAFL genuinely want to ENABLE their clients (wherever their clients are) to experience the BEST of what Latin America has to offer. 

This is the core of their entire LAFL brand and customer experience, It is certainly invaluable and I hope it NEVER changes!

I really want to say thank you to Richard who is beyond amazing. He took my first ranting email, read it, immediately understood what I wanted then and was so consistently lovely every step of the way. To Matt, who was extremely generous – even took time to reply to my emails which he deemed urgent when he was out of office and to Amanda, my gorgeous travel advisor who helped me arrange everything A-Z on my trip. I owe it to all three of them that I experienced the wonders of Latin America this year. BIG THANKS.

BTW, LAFL is not paying me to say all of this. So if you do decide to contact them after reading my blog post, I hope that you will reference me „TheSuperfairy“ so that they know I am putting in a good word out for them. 

FINAL NOTE, in my search for tour planners online – there are some online planners with very similar monikers to LAFL, so please only contact the real LAFL.There are ways to verify this online, please do your own due diligence.

Good Luck!