South America for 4 mths

franko86

Hey,

My girlfriend and I are in the process of planning a 4 month trip around South America from April till about September. I was hoping to get some tips and key things and place's to do when we are on our trip from you all.

I am trying to keep the trip as open ended as possible. We plan to fly into Quito around the 2nd/3rd in April. From we were thinking of doing a 7-10 day trip of the Galapagos.

From this we would like to see what else Ecuador has on offer before we head down to Lima / Cusco to do Machu Picchu /Inca trail.

After this the plan is to head to Lake Tittcaca and onto La Paz and working our way around to Buenos Aries.

We are going to be in Rio for the first 2 weeks in July for the world cup finals and once this was over we were advised to work away up along the coast of Brazil to Recife. Once we get there the person in trailfinders said you could trek accross the amazon until we reach Bogata through various tour groups.

The plan is to spend a month in Coloumbia then and this will bring us up to the end of our trip!!!

We are in the very early stages of planning the trip so any feedback would be much appreciated.

We have a budget of about 9K each, so we will be trying to squeeze as much in as this allows us to do.

Challo

I think that's too much ground to cover in four months.

Flying into Quito and exploring Ecuador - then Peru, Bolivia..somehow over to Rio?
You'd DEFINITELY end up taking internal flights and probably skipping Peru & Bolivia. Your budget is very healthy though so I guess you could afford one or two. Working up part of the coast of Brazil would probably be a month alone. And I'm not sure about the remainder but it doesn't make sense to travel up the Amazon and back to Columbia??!!

LP South America on a Shoestring -buy this and you'll get an idea of itineraries.

Sorry, I don't mean to sound negative but you don't want to spend all your tie on buses and being knackered. Six countries, it's just too vast an area.

Meathlass

Agree with #2 - not a good idea to try and get from Brazil to Colombia. You'll be at the mercy of weather and travel schedules. Love Colombia though, great country. I would fly into Bogota and out of Rio/SP.

You can go from Bolivia into the Atacama in northern Chile then into Salta in Argentina and on to BA. 7 days is plenty in the Galapagos. I also like Cuenca in Ecuador but for me the country was disappointing - one of my least favourite. You need to plan out the places you really want to hit - 4 months will go very, very fast. I spent 7 months there and added in Chile, Argentina and Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay but didn't have enough time to do Brazil. Obviously you know you'll have to book all your Brazil accommodation in advance because of the WC.

gucci

I would echo the above, your really trying to cram in way too much in 4 months. To go across the continent once in that time is a big ask, but your are trying to go over and back again...I think you would be wasting your time!

Forums like this and also gapyear.com are good places to ask for advice for routes that are more achievable.

You need to just get your head around the scale of the countries to understand how long it takes to get from one place to another. IMO places like Peru & Bolivia are better than Argentina & Chile as they are smalller so you can break up your trip a bit more. If you are interested in going to the Amazon, you can also access some of it from Peru or Bolivia, therefore your time in Brazil can be concentrated on the coast rather than the Forest, but again, it depends on what you are interested in.

The LP South America on a shoe string is good to get a reasonable itenary and their timings on bus journeys etc are good so you can understand the time. But I would look up forums and travel sites to get more realistic prices for buses and hostels, as i found them to be about 20% out in most cases...which really digs into your budget if you are doing frequent journies.

VinylJunkie

I was thinking of doing something similar for 6 months (May-Nov). I haven't booked flights yet so I was looking for some opinions, would I be better off starting up in Columbia or Equador and doing those first also Peru and Bolivia for say May - Aug then heading further south to Chile and Argentina?

I was thinking the weather in May-Aug might be too bad to start in Buenos Aries then head south before coming back north.

VinylJunkie

Actually found this from another thread http://gosouthamerica.about.com/cs/travelplanning/l/blwhentogo.htm

Meathlass

VinylJunkie wrote: »

I was thinking of doing something similar for 6 months (May-Nov). I haven't booked flights yet so I was looking for some opinions, would I be better off starting up in Columbia or Equador and doing those first also Peru and Bolivia for say May - Aug then heading further south to Chile and Argentina?

I was thinking the weather in May-Aug might be too bad to start in Buenos Aries then head south before coming back north.

Yeah that's Winter so lots of roads and mountain passes will be closed in southern Chile/Argentina, definitely leave it as late as possible. I was in them in Nov-Jan and it was perfect. Outside mid October it's difficult to travel with the weather.