SA 11 weeks,Overland Rio to Santiago, route?

jidsudap

Hey all,

It would be great if people could shine some light on this for me please! heading to SA for 11 weeks in mid-sept, flying into rio and out of santiago.

Rough plan so far:

Rio -4 nights

Illa de Grande - 4 nights

Iguazu falls, then down to BA.

We're at a lose end of where to hit next, we want to go Boliva and Peru (doing the lares trek), but we also want to go to Medoza and Bariloche, so it seems we'll be doing a bit of back tracking whatever way we go?

From BA we were thinking of ehading to Cordoba up to Boliva then to Peru, the making our way back down to Salta and depending on time bus/fly to bariloche via mendoza, and over the Andes to Santago. (We have been told the bus trip over the andes should be done)

I know we are leaving out Uraguay and Paraquay, and the southern most part of Argentina but we're taking that hit ourselves.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

idontknowmyname

I did Rio- 1 week

Go to Parati and Trinidade (near Ilha Grande)- amazing place, we stayed almost a week post Carnival there. goforcool treks in the Mata Atlantica rainforest which goes into the sea- would love to go back.

Iguazu, then take the lovely 20 hour bus ride to BA. We met so many people doing the exact same route as us, normally after BA people go to Puerto Madryn, it's about 20 hours from BA. From there you go across to Bariloche, make sure to book your onward bus from Bariloche to Mendoza as soon as you arrive at the bus station as we got stuck for 5 extra days trying to get a bus out! Be careful in Mendoza, we had one of our backpacks robbed and we heard awful stories after from people we met who had been robbed, pretty dangerous place for a gringo although we didn't realise it at the time- the white water rafting and wine tasting is cool though.

Mendoza to Salta and then up to Villazon- we got a taxi to the border with Bolivia and then walked to the train station to go to Tupiza, did the Salar Tour from there. Went from Uyuni to Oruro by train, then jumped on a 2 hour bus to La Paz. La Paz- Copacabana on Lake Titicaca. You can get a bus from there for Cusco. We bought a flight from Cusco to Lima- was cheap enough as opposed to 16 hours on a bus. Lima- Nasca, Nasca- Arequipa. Did a tour of the Colci Canyon, highly recommended. Arequipa to the border with Chile.

Stayed in Arica, nice enough town for a few days. The bus journeys are really really long in Chile. We didn't want to do a straight bus ride to Santiago so we went to Iquique after Arica (didn't like it, not much to do), then went to La Serena to break the journey up- this was the longest bit of chile, think it was almost 20 hours or something. Then it was I think 5 or 6 hours to Santiago, and hey presto!

idontknowmyname

Oh and I did all of that in 11 weeks- loads of time!