Hot answers tagged south-america
15
What you want is an "open return" ticket. The outgoing flight is confirmed and the return is "open". Depending on the type of ticket, the return can be up to a year after departure. You can book the return ticket after departure--subject to availability of course. Sometimes you can even change a confirmed return without penalty. You'll probably have to buy ...
14
I've found regardless of destination, that people are far less offended by cultural faux pas-ses then by behavior that would be rude anywhere. In India, I've accidentally paid with my left hand, and I've seen the person in return get a little uncomfortable, and accept the money with his right. What I did, however, is just apologize and ask, at which point he ...
12
I don't believe a definite list of flights exist, but here's what I found after a fairly exhaustive search.
Buenos Aires, Argentina to Cape Town, South Africa on Malaysia Airlines
Buenos Aires, Argentina to Johannesburg, South Africa on South African Airways
Sao Paulo, Brazil to Luanda, Angola on TAAG Angola Airlines
Sao Paulo, Brazil to Johannesburg, ...
12
In general you shouldn't see what you're seeing here - especially for multiple dates, which makes me think that it's possibly either a website error, or a scam of some form.
Airlines do have multiple prices for each flight, and a limited number of seats available in each class. ie, one specific flight might have 5 seats available for $100, another 10 seats ...
11
I was in South America (Argentina to Colombia) and in Ecuador & Colombia met a lot of people coming down from (and afterwards friends I'd met travelled up into) Central America.
With just one exception (who flew), the others had all gone via the San Blas Islands.
http://wikitravel.org/en/San_Blas_Islands
Which to me look simply stunning! I'd seen ...
11
That's entirely possible.
Firstly, there are no trains. Seriously. Don't bother trying to find them. In Argentina there's one from Buenos Aires to Rosario, but the bus is cheaper AND faster. There are some tourist trains in North Argentina (near Salta) and yes, there is the train from Cusco in Peru to Aguas Calientes, but that's about it.
I'll discuss ...
11
As someone who travelled a lot and stayed in many hostels let me say I also saw similar behaviour in many places, not only hostels but also on buses and at tourist sites. This is not limited to South America, but also happens in South East Asia and India.
When speaking to Israelis who travel alone and are usually a little bit older they confirmed my ...
10
Backdoor Jobs is probably my favourite resource for out of the ordinary job adventures. It includes a variety of different jobs for different people with different backgrounds and experiences. A lot of the jobs listed are leading groups or hiking / trekking, BUT there are a lot of other ones available too.
The owner / writer of the site Michael Landers ...
9
When I was in Panama City about 4 or 5 years ago all the hostels had ads posted by private people, sometimes families, that sailed back and forth in their yachts and wanted travellers to come along to help with costs. There was a waiting list for each yacht.
At the time the price to sail was pretty much the same as a flight which was in the region of $300 ...
9
Several people already mentioned the sail boat option, but as none of them has done it themselves, I will add my experience from May 2009:
As said elsewhere the hostels in Panama city act as intermediaries between travelers and the boats. They have a list of boats leaving on certain dates with prices which ranging from 250 to 350 US dollars.
While some of ...
8
Find a busy city in South America, say São Paulo
Find the web site of its airport: Infraero (all brazilian airports)
Look for a flight from São Paulo on an african company: Consulte seu voo, say South African Airways
And you can find direct flights to Johannesburg.
Another way would be to check national airline companies of major destinations: Cairo, Rio ...
8
I solved this problem recently by using miles to get an award ticket. Several airlines (among them: United/Continental, and American Airlines) now allow you to book a one-way ticket for half the cost (in "miles") of a round-trip ticket. If you have the miles, this can be a great deal. I just booked a one-way ticket from California to Germany for 30,000 ...
8
Basically, no. As my Colombian flatmate in London put it, every time a revolution occurs, the first thing that gets hit is the infrastructure, and down goes the rail. Not sure how accurate that is in all countries, but it's certainly the case in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
There are some limited train options in Argentina - ...
7
An example of what I found out in Brasil: I was in a restaurant with friends, and my nose was running (spicy food, you know ;) ). In my own country (Holland) the polite thing to do is to blow your nose while facing away from the table. When I did that, I received surprised comments from my friends. Apparantly it was better to just snort it up and blow your ...
7
Living in New Zealand and having had quite a lot of looks at flights to and from South America - for direct flights you have two options really - LAN Chile and Aerolineas Argentinas. LAN is more expensive but more reliable, and AA is ... the budget option. It was fine tho to fly with, once they actually took off. When they took off.
There are sometimes ...
7
G Adventures provide a lot of South American tours. They also monitor any safety updates in that region for their travellers. Here's a timeline of updates and safety info within the last few months:
http://www.gadventures.com/safety-updates/
6
Short answer: Sometimes.
Long answer: it depends on a LOT of factors - the airline, their policy, whether it's over international or continental borders, whether you're using an agency or website that has access to certain TYPES of tickets (even in economy class there are several categories that they sell). It's frustrating.
When I'm searching, I open up ...
6
I was back-packing in Latin America for 20 months and took my camera everywhere. But it was only a 400 dollar point and shot which fits in my trouser pocket. I used that camera everywhere maybe except inside the favelas in Brazil.
Some friends of mine had bigger SLRs with them and used them a lot too. In Bolivia I met a guy who was there for National ...
6
I spent 3 weeks in Peru last year, mostly in Lima, Cusco and the Sacred Valley, and Colca Canyon and Arequipa. Among our fancier possessions, I had a Canon camera with me and my husband had an Asus laptop. We're not physically intimidating people by any means (I'm just 5'2"), but I think we also carry ourselves confidently when we travel (e.g. no looking at ...
6
I don't know the current situation about Wifi in those countries but I am a developer and I've travelled in all of them. I did not have a laptop nor did I do any work but once in a while I did some coding just to keep my brain in shape and learn new things.
I general expect the Wifi to be better in Chile and Costa Rica than in the other countries and again ...
5
Pro tip: The Spanish word for to dive is bucear and the word for shark is tiburón. If you browse with Google Chrome it has built in support for Google Translate so you don't have to copy and paste URLs between windows or tabs.
The Spanish newspaper El País had an article two years ago which is online called Diez sitios para bucear entre tiburones "Ten ...
5
Hope this is not going to come as a disappointment:
Best Shark Diving Regions are Australia, South Africa, US, and Bahamas.
There is a US operator of Shark Diving Tours, that has tours for Great White, Tiger, etc and has a pretty good FAQ at the bottom of that page that will answer safety and experience questions, Bahamas requires you to be a certified ...
5
As Mark said, no international trains, not many train services at all. Only Brazil and Argentina have some longer distance trains in addition to suburban trains around the bigger cities. Chile has suburban trains out of Santiago that may be helpful.
In addition to the tourist trains Mark already mentioned, there is also at least one in Ecuador and Brazil ...
5
Open tickets
Be aware that there is no such thing as a completely open ticket.
In my experience buying tickets from Australia there are open tickets for three months, six months, or twelve months.
There are no tickets sold with validity beyond twelve months. If you find tickets where this does not hold I would love to hear about it!
The longer the ticket ...
5
I've heard several reports that the Darien Gap is quite dangerous due to drug trafficking. Personally, I would fly although I understand it's possible to cross by hopping on small boats on the Caribbean side. One of the Lonely Planet books (sorry I forgot which one) has more details, but they also don't recommend it.
5
I used Wikitravel. Being a wiki, quite often people will enter info about strikes - I found the road between Uyuni and La Paz was closed two weeks before and two weeks after I went through, and I got that via Wikitravel.
Note that from Cusco, you will most likely travel to Puno first. It's a small, mostly dull town, but from there you have two travel ...
5
When I have priced tickets to South and Central America the cheapest places to get to were Columbia and Panama. Spirit Airlines has some cheap deals including to Lima Peru but I have heard from friends that their service is bad. They also only let you have one 40 lb bag on some flights. But in your case that might not be an issue. Also check out where in the ...
5
Travel is certainly possible. Punta Arenas has 120,000 inhabitants and Ushuaia on the Argentinian side has 60000 inhabitants (with ski resorts apparently opening in June). Advisable depends of course on what you want to do.
Wikipedia has useful information on climate:
Puerto Montt, at 41°28'S, has 6.0–12.7°C in May:
Much further south, Punta Arenas ...
5
My answer does not reflect official rules and laws, just my own experience.
I visited over 80 countries and many of them officially require proof of onward travel, ten of them are in South America.
The only time anybody ask me about onward travel was when checking in for a flight to New Zealand in Sydney. In some other cases I had return flights with the ...
5
First of all, I think you did good when you said SOME in your title. This will save your question from being closed ;)
Second, in some areas of the world smoking in public places and indoors is tolerated unlike Europe and speaking loudly or making noise in the middle of night is just ok, such as in the area these group came from. People from these areas and ...
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