IPhone – Using Location services abroad without roaming charges

In my country (Australia) we are able to ask the mobile provider to disable data on our accounts to ensure we cannot use any at all, and thus cannot be charged for it unwillingly. It might be worth calling up the provider and asking if they can disable the data service.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the question. But why not just take a photo of the location you want to tag. This will (unless you have turned off location services for the camera app) record the GPS information. You can then create an album with your tagged photos and view them in a map view on your phone

If you export the photos you can extract the GPS info using various tools (if you are on a Mac you can simply do a "Get info" on the picture to find the GPS location. If you want to automatise the process you could use a tool like Exiftool.

Other possibilities are to get iPhone apps such as MapPocket, where you can pre-download maps of the area you want to go (Also ideal for holidays abroad, to avoid roaming costs) and then view your location on the map.