I'm english, 33yo, remote worker with an intermediate level of spanish. I've spent some months living in spain but really struggled to find what I really want - language immersion. I find that spaniards my age often have pretty good english and the places I stay are often pretty international - so lots of english and often minimal spanish from the people around. Sometimes I feel a little frustrated at what seems like my slow language progression and I really feel like if I had something close to full immersion for just a few months I could achieve some good progress.
I'm planning to visit and live in south america, doing the visa-free thing eg. 90/180 days per country. I'm particularly interested in Colombia, Peru, Mexico - probably staying in hostel/coworking spaces but I'm really open-minded - just need reasonable wifi and somewhere to work during the day.
I wanted to ask the community for suggestions/recommendations on how I can improve my chances of immersion - eg. countries, cities or even specific projects/locations to stay at. What kind of thing/place can I do in the evening to meet locals and get some level of immersion? I like staying at places with a community feel eg. with communal cooking, hanging out in the evenings etc. - are there places that are largely spanish speaking where I might be able to find that?
I hear a lot of nice things about Medellín, but given it's international popularity, maybe it's going to have quite a lot of english?