It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago in Argentina, when to make an international phone call, you had to go to an urban area, find a “phone store” and book an overseas call, which you then took in a phone booth inside the phone store. Cellular service had not been widespread nor reliable in Argentina until the last decade, but thankfully now in most parts of the country cell communication is good and you can call and transmit data, and receive both as well—both in the cities and in most of the countryside.
Of course if you are coming on a shooting vacation—you are still going to want to check in with the office and with your family, so bring your cell phone along as well as your I pad or tablet. However, there are a couple important steps you need to take that will be able to allow you to communicate with home, and not cost you a fortune do to so.
First—at least a week or two before your trip, call your cellular carrier. If you don’t have an international plan, you will want to get one. If you don’t travel outside the country often, it can be a minimal plan, and these are often offered in $50-$100 increments. But if you, like most people, have e mail on your device, make sure to get a large enough plan to handle the data as well. Your carrier will usually be able to activate your plan for your dates of travel, and deactivate it after you return home. Tell them you will be in Argentina or Uruguay or both. That part of the equation is pretty simple.
Second—with regard to data-to avoid en enormous bill, the best policy is to turn off your data roaming when you are not in range of the internet. Fortunately all of our lodges have excellent internet service, and you will be able to send and receive mail about as fast as if you were at home. But you want to turn the roaming off—or every application on your phone will be reaching out to refresh date at international rates. If you leave the lodge and start receiving mails and texts without internet service…hang on to your wallet. The photo your secretary sent you of a squirrel on water skis sounds pretty cute—but not so much if it cost you twenty bucks to see it. Remember—data off when outside the lodge, that is the best policy and the best way to avoid surprises on next month’s billing.
Finally, you will be on a hunting trip, so treat your phone as if you are hunting it home. Make sure it is in a waterproof case for duck hunts, and keep it in a buttoned pocket if you are in the dove fields or walking for perdiz. You may want to just turn to off all together and just enjoy your shooting trip, but that seems to be harder and harder for any of us to do in this digital age.
We hope you will enjoy a shooting trip with us soon, and we look forward to having you!
– Doug Larsen
