Showing posts with label Itinirary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Itinirary. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Original Route

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

My, my here we go again!


After a few nights of searching for deals and researching best options for our route we bought the tickets. The plan was to fly in to Bogota from Boston and return fro Sao Paulo back to Boston. Continental Airlines had a great deal for our travel dates ($400 for multi-city round trip).
The rationale behind this air travel plan was:
- We have a friend in Bogota
- Cheapest flight into South America from Boston was to Bogota
- We wanted to cover amazon in the beginning of the trip rather than towards the end, when the energy levels were higher
- Flying out of a major city would make it easier for us to get US visa stamped
- We can get our visa paperwork at a friends place in Argentina
The countries we decided to travel were Colombia , Peru, Bolivia , Argentina, Brazil.
We really didn't have too much time for preparing our route so we picked up lonely planet travel books for all the countries we planned to visit from the Boston Public library. Their suggested itineraries was a great starting point for us to flush out the preliminary plan. After researching blogs, reading Thorn Tree and other travel websites, we decided to carry Lonely Planet : South America on a Shoestring with us. We had to watch the weight of our backpack and there was relief that youth hostels will have guidebooks for the country we were visiting.

Quick tips:
- Shop around a lot for travel deals. Use websites like sidestep and orbitz but also visit individual airline websites. Tuesday late night, early Wednesday mornings are best days for getting great deals.
- Don't spend too much time on the initial itinerary as far as you are comfortable with the shell. Plans will change if you are going on a long trip