Originally Posted by caminito

"While Argentina has a lot to offer it is now in really hard times. 10 years of what amounted to bad economic policy has put Argentina in a weird place. Gas is not always a guarantee, the ATMs limit withdraws, food is not always the best and not everything is available. Its just kinda a mess right now and the southern part will be worse than any of the major cities in the north."

Absolute tosh...it isn't California....but the above comments are a wild exageration

My experience is the opposite, Chile has been gutted by a colapse in copper prices and you can see that their road infrastructure is a mess. They build so slowly that the roads are falling apart faster than they can be replaced.
Road: Arica to Bolivia, carretera austral; where not paved is hit and miss, further the road builders have no consideration for fellow citizens and don't post warnings of road works so getting stuck for 3 hours while they are dynamiting the road ahead is not unusual..

Comparing Chilean food with Argentine food is just stupid, unless you are addicted to salmon.
Notes from diary whilst in Chile...
Dinner pizza and wine, food now even more stupidly expensive unless you eat at a stand in the plaza. Restaurants (in Chile) are idiotically expensive and have a snobbish attitude so I can only suppose the the locals seldom go out which may be the case as they do dress up.

ATM's in argentina are limited to U$S 200 per transaction, how many transactions and total amount per day is up to your bank.

Gas stations ARE far apart, always fill up....Argentine patagonia is larger than the whole of Chile, and it is empty, keep that in mind as you scoot past any gas station