Hi there,
A friend and I are planning to explore Latin America, specifically the Northern Part of Chile, Bolivia and Peru. We are planning to arrive in Santiago in the beginning of November and planning to get back around the 30th of January from Santiago as well (cheap two-way flight). So we have little less than 3 months to visit these countries. We made a itinerary with the things we would like to visit, how many hours travel (expected, based on what I read around here) in between locations and how many days we would need in each location at least. We’re interested in your views on this itinerary, any problems that we may encounter. If you have suggestions what we should add, delete, where to stay, spots we definitely should visit etc etc, feel free to share them.
We're interested in hiking (planning to do some multi-day trekking), nature and exploring cities.
- Santiago (2 days) – Flight to Calama and then going to San Pedro de Atacama ( flight = 3 hours, bus = 2 hours )
- Atacama dessert (5 days) – Travel to Uyuni (12 hours night bus)
- Uyuni (4 days) – Travel to Sucre (8 hours by bus)
- Sucure (3 days) – Travel to La Paz (12 hours night bus)
- La Paz (7 days) – Travel to Cobacabana (4 hours by bus)
- Cobacabana (3 days) – Travel to Lauca National Park (Putre) (No Idea how many hours it takes, but there should be an international bus)
- Lauca National Park (3 days) – Travel to Arica (3 hours hours)
- Arica (1 day) – Travel to Arequipa via Tacna (hours)
- Arequipa (4 days) – Travel to Cuzco (night bus 10 hours)
- Cuzco (7 days) – Travel to ICA (… Hours)
- ICA 4 days – Travel to Lima (5 hours) and then to Huaraz (8 hours)
- Huaraz (5 days)
From here, we are not sure what we would like to do next. The schedule above is I think a somewhat rushy schedule, that would take including travel times (assuming that night busses are not always possible) perhaps a little less than 2 months. As said, we have a little about 2/3 more weeks more. One idea is to head back to Lima from Huaraz and take flight to Iquitos to explore the Amazon for a few days. At the end of the 3 months, we will get a flight from Lima back to Santiago. So it would also be possible to start directly with the travel towards the North at point 1.
Is Santa Cruz missing in this itinerary? How are the wild life and hiking possibilities there?
Perhaps, did we overlook any nice spots in Northern Chile? Also, we would be pleased to have comments on the possibility from getting to Lauca National Park from Bolivia, I couldn’t find that much about it.
Furthermore, what about the differences in altitudes we will encounter, would this be problematic?
Looking forward to your comments.
Kind regards,
Ido & Roy