Essential Tips for travelling South America

1.  Time Zones:

Know the time zones in each country you are travelling to and from, its easy cross the border and the time has instantly changed. We went from Bolivia to Argentina and we missed our bus as the time had changed by an hour.

Peru: (GMT -5HRs)

Bolivia: (GMT -4HRs)

Argentina: (GMT -3Hrs)

Brazil, Rio: (GMT -3HRs)

2. Weather:

With South America being such a huge continent, spanning from the Equator to the Southern Hemisphere and the variations in altitude it has very different seasons and weather all over.

Being close to the Equator makes a year-round destination but don’t forget rainy seasons.

For example, visiting Bolivia’s salt flats in the wet season would look and feel very different to the dry season.

Also travelling from Bolivia (cold) to Brazil (hot) the weather is drastically different.

3. Booking your Activities/Hikes:

Booking your major activities/hikes in advance! Activities like the Inca Trail needs to be booked months in advance as only 200 Tourists and 300 Guides/Porters are allowed on the trail a day.

Tours i had Booked in Advance:

• 2 Day/ 1 Night Inca trail with Inti Sun Trek.
• Full Day tour of Cusco City Tour, Salinas de Maras and Moray with Inti Sun Trek
• Uyuni Salt Flats with Red Planet Expedition

4.   Make sure your sites are open when you want to visit + Plan your route:

Some places maybe closed due to season or maintenance, for example Inca Trail is closed in February for maintenance. Seasonally you may want to go to certain festivals.

If you are travelling for a short amount of time make sure you plan your route, otherwise you could end up staying in one place and as we know there are so many gems to see in one location, we can't do them all in a short amount of time. Make sure you have an idea of landmarks you want to see to help you plan your journey. 

Check out my travelling route for South America here.

5. Prepare for bus travel and long journeys:

It's not the easiest, if you have a generous budget you maybe able to get away with minimum bus journeys, however when you do go on a bus journey they are generally for longer periods of time.

Try and plan the journeys around night/early morning to avoid waste of days.

Check out my travelling route for South America here.

6. Use the 4-5 hour stop overs to explore the city:

If you do have a connecting flight where all your checked baggage is transferred its easy to step out of the airport and explore the town/city you are in for a couple of hours before coming back and boarding your flight.

This would work if you also have no checked baggage, you can just carry it out of the airport with you.

Stopping over in Buenos Aries we popped out to the city went to a bar and had a late dinner at Don Julio (Brilliant Steak!) we even got back and still manged to have a nap before flying.

7.  Travel with Currency:

Make sure you have the currency of the country you are travelling to, even though it easy to withdraw currency from ATM’s and easy to find ATM’s in Airports, its not the same when you are not in an airport.  They do also accept Dollars, but you need to be careful as some may not accept Dollars with discrepancies (small tears, crisp notes only).

This is very important for also very remote places where you will find yourself needing to use cash.

8. Locked Bags:

Due to the reputation in South America I believe in keeping your bags locked at all times. If you are out and about with bags it is important to keep your bags close to you and locked. For my suitcases (x2 23KG) I also had cable ties on all the zips with pockets, this would help prevent people inserting items into my baggage during travel. Also, any backpacks we had on us we also had them locked with padlocks.

9. Vaccinations + Medication + Health

Make sure you have had all the jabs you need before travelling, this will help to prevent any illnesses, here are the main ones recommended for South America:

• MMR
• Tetanus
• Typhoid
• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B – Optional
• Rabies – Optional
• Yellow Fever – with Yellow Fever you get a certificate and is required by some countries before entering. It is important that you make sure you schedule this in all in good time before your trip. Even though I have had the Jab I was not required to show proof in any country.

Other medication you may want to take with you:

• Jungle spray – Deet is a special formula to keep insects from biting you, this is always a good idea and you can never have enough.

• Altitude Sickness Tablets (Diamox) – now this is not the type of tablets used for flying but instead for being at high altitudes like Machu Picchu (2,430 meters above sea level), Rainbow Mountain (5,200 meters above sea level) La Paz (3,640 meters above sea level). Make sure you get this in good time as these are no longer sold over the counter in the UK. This would have to be prescribed to you via a GP. I ended up not needing it but you never know until you touch down!

Being Hydrated all the time! Make sure you are drinking enough water even when you don’t feel you have to. Places that are at a high altitude don’t always show the effects of being de-hydrated. I was in Cusco and felt fine until I got back to Lima where I was very sick and ended up in hospital.

Hand sanitiser is a must, make sure you carry a bottle with you everywhere you go. I always end up washing my hand and then using this straight after just to be extra careful. Also, not all places will have running water and lovely soap for you to wash your hands. Before eating is another situation where you may not be able to wash your hands and its important that you do sanitise before eating.

10. Pack a lot of layers:

No matter how you plan to travel (Backing or Huge luxury Suitcase Travel) make sure you pack layers!!!! I ended up wearing most of the same clothes during my stay in Peru/Bolivia and either stripped them down or layered them back up. The only clothes that changed where in Rio because its very hot there.

11.  Wi-Fi

Depending on how you plan to travel this one maybe a bit difficult. I ended up using Wi-Fi for my whole trip which I have never ever done before because I always at some point end up turning my 4G on (it's not needed). However as soon as I got on the flight to South America until returning to London, I had my phone on Airplane mode the whole time!

Guys, I was still able to use everything on my phone including all the social media….

A lot of places you will find do have Wi-Fi and all you have to do is ask if you can’t see it anywhere. I even asked a receptionist can I borrow your phone to check a flight I am supposed to catch and guess what? They let me borrow their phone!

as we stayed in hotels throughout all our stay it may have been slightly easier to do this and maybe of better quality, but not all the time and I still got through South America without 4G.

12. Language:

A lot of blogs and vlogs talk about learning the language before you go to South America, now I know they speak Portuguese and Spanish however I don’t speak any of these languages, maybe a few buzz words in Spanish but not enough. Through our whole journey my partner and I manged to get through our trip without having to know the language and we did just fine.

We even manged to do our own walking tour in Rio because our tour group started without us, and we did this by trying to communicate with locals in English!

So, there you go! My 12 Essential Tips for travelling South America. 

If you have any of your own tips feel free to comment.