Thanks for joining us on our blog! We’ve still got an incredible amount to do, and only two weeks in which to do it–I’m not stressed, are you stressed? But the plans for the first phase of our trip are coming together, so I wanted to put together an update about that.

And the first phase is South America! We’ve known that for a while, but the whole of the South America phase has really started to take shape. We start in just under two weeks in Cartagena Colombia. We’re excited about the food, drink, salsa dancing, and most importantly, 90+ degree temperatures, that await us there! We’ll spend two or three weeks in Colombia, visiting Bogotá and Medellín, before taking the long flight down to Santiago Chile.

Erika has friends in Santiago, and we’ll also be taking trips in the surrounding area to Valparaíso and Chilean wine country. Then at the end of February, we head down to Patagonia! We already have four nights of campsites booked in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, and otherwise plan to see glaciers, penguins, and whatever else Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales have to offer. We’ll return to Santiago, and it’ll be time to head into Argentina.

First stop will probably be Mendoza to check out Argentinian wine country, before moving across the country to Córdoba and Buenos Aires. From Buenos Aires, we’ll take some trips into Uruguay, to see Montevideo and Colonia del Sacramento. Next, we plan to venture into Brazil. We don’t have a good idea what we’re doing there yet, but we both want to see Rio and São Paulo.

From Brazil, we’ll head to the obscenely high altitudes of Bolivia. Starting in La Paz, we’ll eventually make our way down to Uyuni to explore the ridiculous Bolivian salt flats. The outdoorsiness will continue as we go to Peru and plan to trek up to Machu Picchu! We’re also thinking of spending time in Arequipa Peru, before finishing up in Lima.

From there? Maybe back to the states to prepare for Phase Two, maybe a few stops in Central America. It depends how much we lose track of time in South America!

World Traveler Pro-Tips

If you’re planning to tour South America, and your plan is to start in Colombia in January and work your way down the continent, and you want to climb Machu Picchu… come up with a new plan. Yeah, turns out Machu Picchu is closed all February. Also, January thru March is the rainy season there. So, yeah that threw a wrench in our plans, after we had flights to Colombia naturally.

Similarly, that time of year is the rainy season for the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia too! So we were 0 for 2 at that point, since our original plan was Peru then Bolivia then Chile. We’re not making this up as we go along, I don’t know why you would say that.

One thing we did do right though was book our Torres del Paine campsites well in advance! These go fast for the high season (and the refugios for lodging go even faster… they were all gone by the time we got our campsites. So it’s a tent for us!)

Next Time

Check back in with us soon, and we’ll be discussing some of the preparation efforts–most significantly, visas and vaccinations!

Join Us!

We’re hoping people will join us as we make our way around the world. Where will you be joining us in South America? Let us know in the comments!