A minimal amount of additional research

To quote A E Housman, "Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time." In keeping with this, I've spent an absolutely minimal amount of time tonight flicking through guide books regarding northern Chile and the areas of Peru and Bolivia around Lake Titicaca.

My current thinking is that I will completely omit Peru and Bolivia from the main set of flights I'm booking via Trailfinders. That would mean the 'big picture' itinerary is as follows:

Wednesday 27th January - Rio->Santiago
Wednesday 31st March - Santiago->Buenos Aires

As before, I'd try to pop off to Tierra del Fuego almost immediately on arriving in Chile. From there I'd make my way back up to Santiago, probably by air, perhaps with one or two stopovers en route (perhaps at Puerto Montt, about which I know very little except that some flights from TdF to Santiago change there). I'd then make my way overland, probably via a series of hopefully relatively short bus journeys, up to the far north of the country. I gather the scenery is good on that route. From there I can hopefully visit the Atacama desert, go to Arica, stuff like that. Then go by bus into Peru and onto Lake Titicaca (off the top of my head based on what stuck from the guide book, probably via Tacna and/or Arequipa).

With luck some of that would help acclimatise me to the altitude and I think I could quite easily get a flight from somewhere round there on to La Paz. I'd probably fly back to the same place from La Paz and change there for a flight back down to Santiago. Then I could spend some time in Santiago and go on from there to Buenos Aires.


I have no idea what the timescales are like there, but my gut feeling is it's quite easily doable without rushing. Apart from any general travel safety issues, the biggest problem I can see is Peruvian immigration perhaps refusing entry because I wouldn't necessarily have a ticket out of the country. I might hope land border control is not quite as awkward as at airports and I suspect just making sure my bus ticket to cross the border is a return would suffice. I'll probably call Trailfinders visa helpline and/or do some web searching around this issue once I've fleshed out a possible route and the time it would take to cover and checked it actually makes sense in the time I have.

I suppose I could also make the border crossing by air if it made things easier with immigration or safer in terms of avoiding dodgy bits of the country. it would probably be cooler to do it by bus though, I've not actually crossed a border by land yet (well, unless you count Eurostar).

What I do like about this plan is that it makes it easier to get the main flight booking sorted out, since all the niggly details don't really make much difference.

Re-reading this, it is vaguely tempting to do the entire length of the country by land - bus all the way up from (say) Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego to Arica near the border with Peru. I need to check the timescales on that for sure, that might well be pushing it, but maybe not.

Something that occurred to me earlier is that I really ought to see if I can get a half-decent mobile contract sorted out before I go. I suspect mobile reception isn't great in a lot of these places, but I bet there's some, and if I'm going to be moving around a lot it would be nice to know I can call hotels or whatever to confirm reservations without too much difficulty. Pay as you go is not going to cut it, I think - roaming charges might always be a killer, but PAYG is probably even more insane.

I'm being ridiculously lax about my general preparations. I kind of hope that once I've booked the flights I'll really get my arse into gear. I'd rather not leave everything that late, but it's also probably the case that the week before Christmas when I'm in London but no longer working will be fruitful in terms of grinding through the various preparatory chores.