My Goal for March: Earning Points for a Trip To Easter Island

March is going to be a very interesting month at The Miles Professor. We are going to attempt to earn all the points we need to take a trip to one of the most exciting places I can imagine: Easter Island. Easter Island, or Rapa Nui locally, is considered one of the most mysterious places on earth and home to the hundreds of famous moai statues built in the second millennium. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean and a five hour flight from Chile, it’s truly an isolated location with the nearest inhabited island being over 2000 kilometers away. The story of this Polynesian island is astounding.

Svetlana, Natalya and I decided to visit this island as part of a trip to South America in December. We’ll be traveling through Buenos Aires, Santiago and Easter Island. And March is going to be all about earning points for our unforgettable trip!

Why March? I also happen to be participating in a “friendly competition” among some fellow bloggers for collecting points. My friend and fellow New Yorker Matt from Saverocity has decided to organize a challenge for us in the form of a point collecting contest. He’s set a number of rules for which points count, spending restrictions, scoring rules, valuations and so on. I think it’s all in good fun and, to me, the contest is a great opportunity for everyone’s readers to see different styles for earning points, big and small. You can read the full rules and contest announcement on Saverocity.

I, personally, am not a very big points collector. My focus is always on using miles as efficiently as possible. After all, the fewer miles I have, the more creative I need to be about using them wisely. With my busy schedule and inclination toward utmost efficiency, I tend to avoid going more than two blocks out of my way and no one should expect that to change next month. Living in New York, finding Vanilla Reloads is tough due to fierce competition for them and Walmarts are non-existent. While I certainly don’t expect to beat the likes of MilesAbound, I decided to take Matt up on his offer to join the contest to show a “month in the life” of someone who collects points as efficiently as she can and to show that it doesn’t take much to earn enough points for my version of a trip of a lifetime: Easter Island!

For March, we have a personal challenge. We are going to try to collect enough miles for an amazing trip going through Buenos Aires, Santiago and Easter Island in December. We’ll need

• 110,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles each for business class flights to Easter Island (these are not cheap given few options to fly there and it’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and I’ll explain exactly how we booked flights here).
• 60,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points + $750 for a Points and Cash Rate for 6 nights at Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt Buenos Aires.
• Citi ThankYou points to order Hyatt gift checks for incidentals at Hyatt.
• Hotel for one night in Santiago, Chile.
• 3 Hotel nights in Easter Island (with few options, there are not cheap either!)
• Some extra cash for fun on our trip!

If we can earn all the points we need in March for this amazing trip, I will be very happy and I will consider this to be a mission well completed! Fortunately, most of the points will count toward our friendly competition except the American Airlines miles. The American Airlines miles will be earned through the 100,000 mile Citi American Airlines Executive sign-up bonus and credit card bonuses don’t count toward the contest. I look forward to sharing our progress, trials and tribulations through March. And I really look forward to seeing what my fellow competitors are up to! May we all collect lots of points and take amazing trips with them!