Research and Planning

Optical Illusion in Uyuni

That trip to South America. I started looking into going to South America around late May, with a departure date of late August. It’s turning into spring at that time of the year (or at least south of the equator), and I didn’t expect to have too much trouble with the weather, particularly by starting out in Colombia and Venezuela. I’ll admit, I did a lot of searching, and spent countless hours online trying to decide where to go, how to get there, what to see, and a whole lot more. In June I approached a travel agent at the University and asked them to see what it would take to get me around the continent, 9 countries, 10 weeks. In the meantime, I had figured out how I was going to sort out accommodation in the various countries, and how I was going to get myself to the continent and back.

$1 per Kilometer? 

Cash – it’s accepted everywhere…

The first stumble was the initial reply from the travel agent about the bus travel and the itinerary – I know, if you have the money and don’t want to be bothered learning or stressing over connections and how to get from point A to point B, then a travel agent can sort things out, all you have to do is plunk down the money, pick up your tickets, and read the directions. Fortunately I couldn’t afford the US 5,000 dollar price tag associated with bus travel and a few tours (this over and above any accommodation, any food, any extras, and a quick calculation of all those items brought me to a rough estimate of around US$10,000 for the trip – way over budget). We started parsing down the details and the inclusions of the trip. From a starting point in Cartagena, Colombia, through Medellin to Cali and to Quito in Ecuador, from there south to Lima and on to Cusco, Puno, La Paz (Bolivia), through the Uyuni Salt Flats into Chile via San Pedro de Atacama and down to Santiago, then across to Mendoza in Argentina and to Buenos Aires, with the final stretch from there through Uruguay into Brazil, via Curitiba to Sao Paolo. (a total of approximately 9,500 kilometers). The trip would have included several ‘half-day’ tours in several of the countries, but most importantly, it didn’t include Venezuela, and it didn’t go south far enough in Chile.

The final route…
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In the end, I canceled all the bus travel and all the tours before Cusco in Peru. I retained a 4-day, 3-night trip to Macchu Picchu, the train ride included, a day-trip on lake Titicaca, the 4-day, 3-night trip across Uyuni Salt Flats, a day-trip in San Pedro de Atacama to the Moon Valley, and a half-day wine-tasting trip in Mendoza, Argentina. I’ll get to all of those in their own time, as there’s something to be said about all of them. The travel agent probably didn’t like me very much, because there had been a lot of back and forth with plenty of changes, so I doubt they made much money on selling me the package. I elected to sort out my own travel from Colombia to Peru, and then from San Pedro de Atacama through the rest of Chile and Argentina into Brazil – this was after doing a rough calculation of bus fares that I found published on various sites, which all together, brought me to somewhere much less than US$1,000 for all the fares I was ever going to want.

The empty trail…

Ticket, Insurance, Vouchers…

I bought a plane ticket. After a lot of searches online I got a ticket that I thought was pretty cheap – it almost cost less to fly from Victoria, British Columbia via Toronto, down to Bogota and into Caracas, then back from Sao Paolo through Toronto to Victoria (with the open break between Caracas and Sao Paolo and stop-overs in Toronto in both directions) than a return ticket Victoria to Halifax: go figure.

I bought additional health insurance coverage and travel insurance – if you’re Canadian there are a couple of things you need to look into – I’ll cover that in a separate sidebar. If you’re American you probably know all about buying insurance, but there are things to look into as well. If you’re from anywhere else, I’ll cover it in the separate sidebar I mentioned (look for the title: Travel Insurance). I also looked into visas – another topic to be covered in a sidebar, as there are many little things that need to be addressed (look for the title: Visas).

Tickets ready, passport ready, travel insurance ready, tour vouchers more or less organized. I was ready to take off on that leap into South American space;

then trouble arrived.