We decided to spend bulk of our trip in Peru and Bolivia considering these countries were cheaper. The remaining time would be split between Argentina and Brazil. One of the key milestones to keep us on track during the trip was to make it to Oruro, Bolivia for the carnival. Oruro has the 2nd largest carnival in South America and considering we were not keen on Rio Carnival ( expensive, unsafe, hard to find accommodations) we decided to go to Oruro.
Our preliminary itinerary for a trip of 66 days looked like this:
Land in Columbia- Bogota and around: 2 days
Fly to Leticia and take a trip in to Amazon: 8 days
Speed boat to Iquitos, Peru and boat down to Pucallpa: 8 days
Bus to Lima and sightseeing: 5 days
Nazca, Arequpa: 5 days
Cuzco: 5 days
Lake Titicaca, Puno: 3 days
Bolivia: 10 days
Argentina: 10 days
Brazil: 10 days
Key takeaways:
- Plans will change as we travel along, we would need to be flexible
- Use this outline for initial reservations, visa
Hi there,
ReplyDeleteGreat to come across your travel blog! I am an Indian, living in Norway preparing to backpack across south america this summer. I was thinking of traveling to Colombia(with Bogota as my start & end point), Ecuador, Peru & if time and budget permits Bolivia.
As I have a round trip ticket to Bogota, I guess I will have no problem getting colombian visa. However, I do not want to put fixed dates for rest of my travel inside south america, in other words I will not be knowing for certain when/how I will be entering/exiting Ecuador, Peru & Boliva.
Do you think it will cause any problems with my visa applications in those countries ? Especially since I will not be able to show the proof of departure.
Both Peru and Bolivia will require you to submit entry and exit details. We knew part of our travel plans and so rest we had to make it up. i assume you are honestly planning to exit the countries in question, as we were, so we were able to do this with a clear conscience.
ReplyDeletei initially tried reasoning with officials in two embassies that we had a ticket out of brazil, but they were unwilling to give us the visa for their country. After trying various options we ended up just editing info from our return Rio e-ticket to either lima for Peru or La Paz for Bolivia in MS Word.
This is kind of a ridiculous requirement to get visas especially when there is open ended travel.
For the argentina visa, if you are an Indian citizen, you have to appear in person for the visa? Can you have a friend or agent submit it for you?
ReplyDeleteI represented my husband at the consulate. Don't see why you can't use travel agent or friend. Do check their website to see if that requires an additional form to be filled out. You can call and ask to but it was hard for us to get ny consulate on the phone
ReplyDelete