This time I would like to focus more on details about how travel throughout countries in South America.
I spent in South America almost a year so I have decided to put together some useful info, mostly based on my personal experience, for anybody who is planning some trips on this marvelous continent. This include information about local the buses and airlines, approximate prices, expectations and what you should be careful about. I can begin with airline options which can get you to South America at first place. These tips are mostly for long term travelers, which means prices of one way flights, because nobody wants to be limited by date of your flight to go back.
Prices today of air tickets in and from Europe, Asia or US to other continents are relatively low from which you can benefit even if you want to go to countries like Peru or Colombia directly. Prices has been declining during last few years. I focus more on travelers from EU, for US travelers I believe the situation is much simpler. I can add to this that cheap outbound city in US is mostly Miami in Florida. In EU, most of the cheap flights to South America are usually from Spain - Madrid. If you will try to buy flights from other capitals in Europe there are usually connection through Madrid. Iberia, Avianca or Air Europa are the cheapest, there are other companies but much more expensive. Of course, sometimes you can find some promotions but I am talking about the usual possibilities. The cheapest destination from Madrid is to Lima – Peru, Colombia - Bogota or sometimes Santiago de Chile, prices in range from 350$ to 500$ dollars, depends on season. For example, due to date writing this article 11.04.2017, I have found one way direct flight from Madrid to Santiago de Chile just for 320$ but it is limited just for month May, by airline Iberia. It’s quite fast and really cheap flight! Other way is to flight through US. In that case, you need electronic registration if you are EU citizen, otherwise transit visa are needed. From US, you can get quite cheap flights to Peru or Colombia but I am not in favor of this option due to time infectivity and other possible complications. To effectively find the cheapest flights I use search engines as google flights combine with Skyscanner, that works for 90% of situations. In my case I have mostly experience with buying tickets without further big plans, just 2 or 3 weeks in advance, it’s possible even if you want to flight just week ahead, it’s just trickier to get good deal.
Unfortunately, this is not the case for South America. Lack of competitions and lower demand makes international flights around South America very expensive. But still there are some possibilities you should get you better prices. Sometimes search engines as Skyscanner or Google flights doesn’t include all airlines from South America especially those which are local. If you check local Bolivian flights in search engines the only company will be found is Boliviana de Aviation (BOA) which is by the way very good airline for the price. But in fact, Bolivia has another 3 airlines, EcoJet, TAM and Amazsonas. All of them except TAM have websites and online services as any other airline. The TAM has only offers available in offices or by phone, it’s cheapest but I would say with worst reliability. Because I stayed in Bolivia for almost 4 months I had opportunity to try all the companies and I can tell you when I flew with TAM it was really something, the flight I will never forget. TAM is for Transporte Aéreo Militar so you can imagine, they have two very old Boeings 737 in inventory, so old that I would believe they were one of the first in history ever came from the assembly line. It was flight from Cochabamba to La Paz. From beginning during whole flight the plane was shaking as hell, I was just waiting when the plane would be shatter to pieces. I mean generally it should be safe, planes don’t fall from sky very often, it’s just that lack of comfort I had, you know, that feeling you are going to die, but hey, otherwise is was fine, I got snack for free! Ha-ha damn, it was crazy! I would recommend it for some people who likes more adventure situations.
Be careful if you are traveling from city Sucre by plane, there is new airport outside of the city named Alcantari. It’s more than hour ride by car located southeast from Sucre. Don’t be mistaken by Sucre airport located nearby the city, when I was traveling it was just recent change and nowhere wasn’t any information about it, jno google map location of the new airport, and I had to be careful when I would be taking the taxi because they could try to scam me, so I had to say literary take me to Alcantari Airport for to be sure. It was during July last year, so I am not sure how exactly it’s the situation now but I would say that now it should be fine, no more scams and more information. At that time in July, they could have taken me to the old closed airport and act like they didn’t know anything about it and then I wouldn’t have other choice but to use the same taxi to get to the right airport. Fortunately, I traveled with my friend from Bolivia, it didn’t happen to me. Of course, scam with taxi can technically happen anywhere it’s always good to be careful about some details.
Generally, in South America domestic flights are cheap, like in Bolivia average price for ticket is around 35$, depend which destinations or company. I will write article about Bolivia and how to travel in more details separately. Domestic prices are lower due to fact that flights are more demanding, infrastructure is in not in great shape, especially in Bolivia or Peru or in case to travel from Patagonia to one of two capitals can take really long time by bus or car, so flight is logically the only option. The distances between major cities can be really big, that is concern for all countries of SA. Example: In Colombia, I had to get from Cali to Cartagena, it’s more than 1000km and due to bad infrastructure, by bus it would be very challenging because it can be sometimes very bumpy and it takes over 23 hours to reach the destination. Usually all airports which you are going to visit are reachable at least by taxi, in some cases by buses.
As I mentioned before international flights within South America can be nightmare for budget travelers. The prices are just too high sometimes. Example: domestic Bolivian flight from La Paz to Sucre normally costs around 50 USD but if I would like to take flight from La Paz to Cusco, which is even closer, it would cost up to 300 USD. Fortunately, after I had done some research, it has changed.
But, airline Amazsonas has time to time budget flights from La Paz to Cusco only for 100USD, sometimes even cheaper. This is good news I think after time it should be even better. Otherwise if you want to travel to Cusco by bus the best option is to get to La Paz and from there to Copacabana, there you can check amazing big Lake Titicaca, and from there you can continue directly to Cusco – Peru by bus.
If you would like to travel from Bolivia to Brazil on budget there is one relatively cheap option. Normally, flight from Bolivia would cost to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro more than 400 USD! So, the cheaper, interesting way I had found is, first you need to go Santa Cruz, then from Santa Cruz by train or bus to Brazilian border city Corumba and voila! From Corumba airport it’s possible take cheaper flight to any of the big cities around Brazil, and that’s it, you just saved hundreds of dollars for one trip! By the way, the route by train from Santa Cruz to Corumba is one of the few railway connections which is still operational in South America, so I would say it worth to try.
In all South American countries are flights covered by international airlines as Avianca, LATAM and sometimes by COPAN, Aerolíneas Argentinas or BOA. These airlines are easy to find on internet, so as I mentioned before I will focus mostly on local airlines of every country separately. I can say that some local airlines focus more on big cities and some more on small cities or towns less reachable by other means of transportation.
In Chile is very known and popular LATAM, once two separated companies of Chilean LAN and Brazilian TAM, which has cover all over Chile plus international flights around whole America continent and even flights to Europe. Another company is local Sky Airline which covers most of cities in Chile. All of them are searchable in search engines.
Peru has five commercial airlines. Two of them international as LATAM, Avianca and three local. All of them are searchable in search engines. Local airlines are Peruvian Airlines, Star Peru and LC Burse. Only google flights is able to find all of them.
Ecuador has only one local airline by name TAME. With TAME you can get very good deals to Galapagos. Other two airlines are same as before, LATAM and Avianca. All of them searchable in search engines.
In Colombia was founded large, very known airline Avianca and some local airlines as well. Local budget airlines are VivaColombia, EasyFly and Aerolínea de Antioquia (ADA). Only some of them are searchable in search engines. Airline ADA and EasyFly focus more on smaller cities in Colombia.
When I traveled from Chile to Bolivia, Peru and then separately from Ecuador to Colombia. My opinion is that generally in South America is quite easy travel around with bus, compare with Central America where was much more difficult to find long range international buses. If you want to there is even direct bus which will takes you from Lima to Cali, it takes 42 hours but yeah, it’s possible. Tickets are usually cheap, and the bus companies more or less reliable, in some rare cases which I had heard of you can get steal baggage from trunk but otherwise usually nothing serious going on with bus companies. In Chile in some cities there are not some big main stations, every bus company has their own station separated.
I think the biggest challenge was travel in specific areas of Bolivia like any route around city Sucre which were in very bad condition. In my case from Santa Cruz to Sucre was one of the worst experience by bus. It took more than 13h mostly in very old bus through, bumpy, crappy, unconsolidated roads and everything was full of dust. Because of the dust, I had sometimes problems to breathe in the bus. Of course, this as many other things is part of adventure, it what its makes it special. Then I would warn you about routes in and from Lima in Peru, theft in buses is quite often, don’t put anything valuable into your baggage but keep it in backpack with you. Once the route from Ecuadorian-Colombian border to city Cali, was pretty dangerous due, to problems with guerilla army in that region. The militants used to raid buses, usually they targeted tourist’s, but thanks to government this is thing of the past. Easy, I traveled through exactly by this route and everything was all right, the presence of government military still might be there but the last case of the bus robbery happened three years ago, so there is nothing to worry about today. Well, generally I have to say, personally I have never had any problems on any airport in any country in South America, just delays sometimes, max up to 4 hours.
The list of international airports of most of the countries in South America and how to get in or out.
Argentina - International Airport Ezeiza, Buenos Aires. Transport by bus to center or back, number 8, cost is up to 8AR. By Taxi it can cost up to 400AR. Duration by bus up to 2 hours.
Chile - Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport, Santiago de Chile. Transport by bus to center or back, cost up to 3000 CLP, duration more than 30min by bus.
Peru - Cusco international airport. Transport by taxi costs up to 35 soles from city to Airport, opposite direction can cost even twice more but if you are willing to save some money, you can go further from airport by foot and then take taxi, it should cost no more than 30 soles.
Ecuador - Mariscal Sucre International Airport, Quito. By bus is best option to take green bus which goes from Quito Airport to the Rio Coco bus station, it costs 2$. On this station are more options. If you travel to center take Metro bus which goes directly there, costs not more than 1$. What is interesting, Quito the public transportation includes one of the longest buses in the world – exactly 27m long. Trolley buses in Quito are no exception neither.
Colombia - El Dorado International Airport, Bogota. Right next to the terminal is public bus line which goes right to the city center. Tickets should cost 6$ but the price could change after time.
Well, that's all. I hope I include everything important for you guys.
If you have any question or if you want to know more about traveling just let me know, don’t hesitate to contact me on email or on my Facebook site.