South America - Chile to Bolivia

Macyp3

Can anyone recommend a good way to get from Santiago Chile to La Paz Bolivia?

I'm spending some time in Santiago, Valparaiso and Santa Cruz and was planning on heading to Mendoza, Arg for a couple of days before heading up north to Atacama in north Chile and into Bolivia via the salt plains.

Is this a possible route to take or is there a more direct way of getting there?Anything in between people would recommend to do/see? Time isn't really an issue as I have 4 months between Chile, Bolivia and Peru before flying out of Rio .

Cheers

Meathlass

That's the pretty standard route but most people do it the other way around i.e. from Atacama to Uyuni and on to La Paz. Not sure about the availability of tours going in your direction though you should be able to get transport. All those jeeps dropping people off in Chile have to return to Uyuni after all.

You could go straight from Chile up into Southern Peru to Arequipa, then on to Cusco, MP, Puno, La Paz, Unuyi, Salt Plains and ending in Atacama. Then you'd have to make your way back to Lima from there. There's a good big of repetition in this journey but you have the time and you might find it easier to meet people, get tours and generally cheaper all round to go in the general directions all the other gringos are going in!

Macyp3

So by the sounds of it, if I undertsnad you correctly, we'll be going the opposite way to most of the other backpackers?I'm starting my trip in Santiago so apart from doing some overlapping as you mentioned I'll have to figure out a route to go.

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to catch a bus from Mendoza up to Atacama, I'll have to check this out, but like you said there's most likely going to be some transport going from there into Bolivia. I'mm assuming from my time in Asia that there's tours and transport going in both directions once you get to anywhere in Bolivia and Peru, surely they wouldn't just operate in a 1 way cycle.

I'm also thinking about heading into northern Peru and potentially Ecuador if time permits as I may extend my stay, any thoughts on these areas also? There doesn't seem to be much info on these places about.

vinylbomb

If you want to go to Mendoza and not have to double back on yourself (ie back to Santiago) you could go north in Argentina to Salta, then get a bus from there to Calama.

These links may come in handy

http://www.sanpedrodeatacama.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=75&lang=english

http://www.gettoandfrom.com/argentina/salta/salta-to-calama/

The vast majority of travelers I met did the Salt Flats run from San Pedro (Chile) to Uyuni (Bolivia).
You can do it the other way around, but it seems most people if they are going from Uyuni into the Salt Flats do a sort of 2 day loop through the sights and end up back in Uyuni.

The farther north in South America you go the more "real" it gets. Thats not to say that Argentina and Brazil arent brilliant, they are amazing, but the type of traveller you encounter changes - less gap year kids and lads drinking their way around the world.

Macyp3

Those links look good, cheers for those.

That looks to be the route I'll do. Just need to make sure I get some USD in advance cos ARS look like trouble!