We were away for 3 months and we organised it all ourselves.
Independent travelling can be challenging - but very rewarding.
It's not for everyone and that's why there are travel agents, tour companies etc.
But if you are independent-minded, like to do your things your own way - when you want to do them, have a bit more time, can be flexible and willing to (maybe) take some risks - then this is the only way to go!
Thanks to Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Footprint guides and others planning is fairly easy.
Plus with the wonders of the internet with blogs, and unlimited amount of tourist info you can do it all before you go
or as you go.
Just Google!
I always do a bit of research to on the places that our worth our attention.
I use Lonely Planet and Trip Advisor a lot.
For this trip I bought the hard copies of Lonely Planet guides "Chile and Easter Island", "Argentina" and Peru and got the digital versions included or for only a little extra.
I also bought a couple of digital chapters for Peru.
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| Airbnb in Bariloche, Argentina |
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| Our lovely airbnb host in El Calafate, Argentina |
We're not hotelly/resorty type of people and a bit old for backpacker hostels,
Maybe we are flashpackers!
...but I love Airbnb.
I love that you can look it up online and there is a variety of options to suit you.
On this trip because there were 4 of us it was often cheaper to rent an apartment.
I looked for places that had cooking facilities so we could save money by making our own breakfasts and dinners.
Airbnb also seems to be a host site for guest houses, hostels and other things these days. And it always worth seeing if they are on other booking sites as well as sometimes they are cheaper.
I think this may be because airbnb fees are higher than some other booking sites.
Some towns don't seem to have many airbnbs so I used Bookings.com, Hostelworld.com, Trip Advisor and just googling.
In this way I booked the first 5 weeks of our trip and a hostel in San Pedro de Atacama as accommodation is rather tight there.
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| Airbnb in El Calafate, Argentina |
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| Niko's Hostel in Puerto Natales, Chile |
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| Eric's airbnb in Iguazu, Argentina |
In Argentina and Chile there were more options and as we travelled further north there was less airbnb.
We found guest houses and hostels.
I guess guest houses are like hostels for grown-ups! and I wish there were more grown-up hostel-type places.
You know. comfortable rooms with ensuites, with a common area for cooking, chatting and sitting.
Not too big, nothing fancy.
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| Centre of Hotel Utama, Copacabana, Bolivia |
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| Some guest houses come with mini people for us to mind |
The advantages of apartments for us were - cost, cooking facilities, unshared bathrooms (or only shared with our travel-buddies).
We enjoyed meeting some lovely hosts.
Advantages of hostels and guest houses - you get to interact with other travellers. Find out where to go etc. Plus some social fun.
Most hostels can book tours or buses.
Our budget was $50 per couple, per night and we managed to average that.
Also as time went on and we got to Bolivia and Peru where the cost of living is cheaper we found ourselves less keen to cook for ourselves. Funny that!
But we found the places we stayed often included breakfast - so that was OK.
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| Central courtyard of Yanantin guest house, Cusco |
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| View from breakfast terrace at Wayra guest house, Arequipa, Peru |
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| View from Roberto's Airbnb in Puno, Peru |
How we got there
We have a friend who is a travel agent so she is rather super at booking our flights.
We were lucky that when we were thinking about going LAN air announced a special deal - Sydney to Santiago, Lima, Buenos Aires for $1250 return.
Flying around South America can be rather expensive but due to the great distances sometimes it's the only way to go.
The alternative is rather long bus trips - sometimes over 24 hours!
Anyway you might find that you can add on internal flights to your international flights and it might work out cheaper.
Talk to your local friendly travel agent!
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| Train from Ollantaytambo to Aguas Calientes on the way to Machu Picchu |
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| How not to travel |
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| Motorcycle taxi |
We also did a fair amount of travel by bus and finding out about buses is hard from overseas.
There is a website called Rome to Rio which could be handy for finding out about buses. There is also an app but but I found it wasn't very reliable.
For example: we needed to travel by bus from our furthest south, Ushuaia to Puerto Natales. Rome to Rio listed the bus companies but it isn't possible to book them online from here.
Something about Chilean credit card blah blah.
Also it had incorrect info about what days which buses went on and we changed our booking to stay a day longer in Ushuaia to the day we thought a bus departed.
However when we got there we found there were buses every day but on the day we wanted to travel it possibly wasn't the best bus.
Somehow we survived!
After that it was easier to book buses in Peru by going to the bus station or by booking online.
For the first few places it was cheaper and easier for the four of us to hire a car.
This gave us greater flexibility and independence.
At San Pedro de Atacama cars were hard to find and also expensive due to the mines in the area.
Tours in this area were good because we went to places that would have been hard to find by ourselves driving off across the high desert.
I is so great now that you can do most of your research and planning for a trip from the comfort of you own home!
But maybe it eliminates the mystery and intrepidness of independent travels.
What do you think?
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