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Large, open-ended question ahead - apologies in advance! My wife and I are intending to travel around most/all of South and Central America over the course of next year, starting from probably mid January until who knows when. We don't have any kind of plan yet other than maybe a vague idea of travelling south to north or vice-versa depending on what works better. We're sort of low to mid-range budget people, since we don't have jobs anymore we can't splurge but we don't have to scrounge for the absolute cheapest hostel either. But my question is: are there any sights slightly off the beaten track that people would recommend? Since we have the luxury of time, we can head for the obscure places as well as the highlights. Are there particular times of year we definitely should or shouldn't visit places? What's your secret hidden gem? In terms of what we like to see, we're pretty open-minded. Local food and culture is a must, I love history, my wife loves art. We both do a lot of beaches and snorkelling (unfortunately I can't scuba dive due to a medical condition), and we like to do hiking as well. Would love to hear some suggestions!
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Sep 2, 2016 15:23
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:57 |
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Personally I'd get both hep shots (remember if you get the booster as well you're covered for 20 years or something), plus tetanus and rabies. However, I'm Australian and it's super cheap for me so I err on the side of caution. Depends as well on what you're planning to do there - if it's just a resort stay for a week I wouldn't bother. But if you're going jungle trekking and poo poo I definitely would.
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May 13, 2017 09:14
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AbDomen posted:I posted a separate thread about this before realizing I could just post in this one. Oops! I'm a big fan of Intrepid. I've done three trips with them in Asia, Europe and Africa and always been very happy. They have a few different styles, but it's mostly doing logistics (hotels and transport), and at each destination they mostly leave you alone to explore and experience. Their target market is usually 25-40 age group, people old enough to be out of the "let's get wasted every night" phase of travel, but not yet in the "travel with the kids" phase. Contiki might be different in South America, but in Europe it's usually known as a party tour for 18-year-old Australians getting drunk and hooking up in a succession of European capitals.
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May 30, 2017 23:50
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Hadlock posted:they ask me if they should charge my card in CRC or USD This is an international card thing though, most terminals these days will ask if you want to charge in local currency or your home currency. Always pick local currency by the way, as it's a huge forex scam they have going. Paying in your home currency always gives you a lovely rate, but they'll charge your bank the market rate and pocket the difference. ATMs often give you a scary-sounding message about how they "can't guarantee the exchange rate", but they're honestly just relying on you not knowing the market rate and being able to do the maths in your head quickly.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:29
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Hadlock posted:I've been to 9 countries in the last year (including Mexico, which is sort of Centra America), this is the only place I've been offered this option. Was more of a PSA than anything else. I've been offered the choice in most of the 50+ countries I've visited in the last couple of years - not 100% of the time, but definitely more often than not. Depends on who the seller's bank is I guess. Either way - always take the local currency option if it's ever offered.
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Sep 5, 2018 21:30
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Curious to know if anyone here has much experience with driving in Mexico? Thinking of doing a road trip probably around the centre and south and wondering what the driving conditions (particularly other drivers) are like. I've driven in some moderately crazy places before (Sicily, Greece, Romania, Naples), so I'm OK if Mexico is on that level. Just want to make sure it's not on the Egypt/India level of insanity.
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Jun 2, 2019 13:40
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Saladman posted:What's "south"? Yucatan driving is about as tricky as driving in Texas or California. I guess you mean more like Oaxaca though? I haven't been there and I imagine it's not Yucatan by any stretch, but I've driven around a fair amount of Latin America and almost all around the Mediterranean and found driving in Southern Italy to be unambiguously more challenging even compared to Nicaragua or Cuba... mainly because there's a poo poo ton more traffic in Naples. I guess the only more challenging aspect is you have to worry more about hitting pedestrians or people going the wrong way down streets on scooters which rarely happens in Mediterranean Europe, but I wouldn't psych yourself out over it. FWIW driving in Egypt is not particularly bad, except for Cairo. Yeah, we travel specifically to visit World Heritage sites and Mexico has a whole heap of them roughly on an axis between Zacatecas and Oaxaca City, plus a few more over in the Yucatan area. Normally we'd try and use PT but I'd imagine we'll have our dog with us on this trip, and I've read that dogs aren't allowed on the intercity buses. I may well be wrong about Egypt, it was the first non-first world country I ever visited and it was quite a few years ago now, so my perspective has probably changed quite a bit.
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Jun 3, 2019 02:35
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punk rebel ecks posted:So I have a hotel room in Manaus, Brazil paid for on the 11th. I won't be able to get to the hotel room until like 3:00am though. There is a 24 hour front desk but Adoga's site says that check-in closes at 12:00AM. Have you tried stuff like social media to get in contact with them? I've noticed a lot of places these days will never answer an email, but can be pretty responsive on Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger etc. You're writing them in Portuguese, right?
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Mar 4, 2022 06:55
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punk rebel ecks posted:I'm using Agoda. I email Agoda and they email them. I don't speak Portuguese. Yeah but you know the name of the hotel, just find them on social media, contact them directly and say you've got a booking from Agoda for date X and you're arriving at 3am the following morning. Just use Google Translate to put it in Portuguese, I guarantee you're not the first person to do that with them! If you're worried about mangled translations, translate the Portuguese back to English and see if it's still decipherable.
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Mar 4, 2022 07:48
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Any Argentina goons here? We've just kicked off our three month South America odyssey and are figuring out various options and places. Specifically about Argentina, I remember hearing a few years ago about some crazy black market system for exchanging currency, where the black market rate and the official rate were vastly different, so that if you got cash from an ATM you essentially doubled the prices of everything in the country - or something like that anyway. Is that still the case? Is there a preferred method for accessing money that's not crazy expensive? I'm not American if that matters at all (Australian). Also wondering what driving is like, particularly up in the northern areas of the country. Although I'm a pretty experienced driver and have driven in many countries, I wouldn't consider driving in BA or any other big cities. But there's a couple of spots up north towards Bolivia and Paraguay that we're keen to check out, and if the highway driving is generally pretty easy up there I can probably give it a shot. Finally - any Brazilian goons here as well? We're interested in hitting up Brazil as well, but really I just want to know if the crime is as bad as everyone says it is. Over in Oz we basically have no exposure to anything from Brazil that isn't crime or politics related, so I'm trying to figure how much is real or not. We had the same issue with Mexico, where the only news you get is narco-related, but even in the more "dangerous" cities like Morelia and Zacatecas we largely felt fine (during the day, and in the tourist areas anyway). Is it mostly the same deal in Brazil? I've also heard that the inland cities away from Rio/Sao Paolo are generally better, and the further north you get the dodgier it gets too. Any tips/advice? Neither of us are big drinkers, and we don't really go out at night at all if that makes a difference.
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Jun 19, 2022 03:52
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Speaking of exchange rates, I’m in Argentina at the moment and it’s loving wild down here. Official rate is 125:1, and when we arrived two weeks ago the blue rate was 225:1. Yesterday we changed at 293:1 
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Jul 21, 2022 13:07
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webmeister posted:Speaking of exchange rates, I’m in Argentina at the moment and it’s loving wild down here. Official rate is 125:1, and when we arrived two weeks ago the blue rate was 225:1. Yesterday we changed at 293:1 Update: today we changed at 315:1, things are going well! We’re heading for Paraguay and then Brazil in a few days and I’m really going to miss feeling like a king
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Jul 21, 2022 17:12
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Chikimiki posted:What is this rate thing? Quick googling suggests this means you'll have to arrive with your cash dollars in Argentina and change them for local currency on the Yeah basically, someone explained it properly at the top of the page but the official exchange rate is set by the government. There's crazy inflation here, like 70% or something, people want to put their money into a more stable currency, but they can only exchange limited amounts at a time. So there's a huge unofficial market for forex trading, mostly USD and Brazilian reals but some Euros too. We brought $300 USD in from Bolivia a few weeks ago, and then pulled out another $200 USD when we went over to Uruguay for a few days. Doing the exchange can feel kinda dodgy (in Cordoba and Salta we managed to find bus companies that would exchange), but here in BA there's just one pedestrian shopping street with dozens of sketchy guys hanging around yelling "cambio cambio cambio". For our exchanges, we just hunted down the nicest looking lady (rather than the taxi mafia looking guys), she took us into a "jewellers shop" in a small run-down mall where we did the exchange. Plenty of other people doing it too so it feels moderately safe but yeah. Weird carrying around stacks of cash, because the biggest note they have is 1000 peso and our exchange today gave us 31 of them. The most annoying part is that you just then have to pay cash for loving everything, because if you do a credit card payment that goes through at the official rate. So if your lunch is 1300 pesos, paying on card it'll be $10 USD. Paying with cash that you've exchanged at 315:1 like we did today, your lunch is now $4.10 USD. Crazy poo poo.
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Jul 21, 2022 19:13
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black market
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Hadlock posted:Oh yeah, and I can't stress this enough, wear an N95 mask at the airport and in the plane, particularly in the security line and in the lobby waiting to board. There's an insane number of people coughing right now I've noticed this a shitload in Argentina, every time you get on an overnight bus there's people constantly coughing and hacking and totally unmasked. I'm still wearing an N95 even though I caught super mild Covid a month ago in Bolivia. We just crossed into Brazil yesterday, so I'll be interested to see what it's like over here as well. The woman at the Claro store who sold us SIM cards sniffled about every 5-10 seconds and sneezed several times in the 15 minutes we were at the counter, so it's not looking good! RE Jamaica, is Uber available at all on the island? I detest them as a company but it's a godsend when travelling - knowing roughly what a reasonable fare is, being able to track your journey, removing the incentive for a dodgy driver to take the long way, being able to communicate your destination precisely without a language barrier etc etc.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:58
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webmeister posted:Finally - any Brazilian goons here as well? We're interested in hitting up Brazil as well, but really I just want to know if the crime is as bad as everyone says it is. Over in Oz we basically have no exposure to anything from Brazil that isn't crime or politics related, so I'm trying to figure how much is real or not. We had the same issue with Mexico, where the only news you get is narco-related, but even in the more "dangerous" cities like Morelia and Zacatecas we largely felt fine (during the day, and in the tourist areas anyway). Is it mostly the same deal in Brazil? I've also heard that the inland cities away from Rio/Sao Paolo are generally better, and the further north you get the dodgier it gets too. Any tips/advice? Neither of us are big drinkers, and we don't really go out at night at all if that makes a difference. Figured I should answer my own post here, just in case it'll help someone else in the future. We ended up spending nearly a month in Brazil back in July/August, and as I kinda suspected, it was largely fine. At the very least, it was nowhere near as bad some people lead you to believe. We crossed over the land border from Argentina at Iguazu Falls (unbelievably impressive), flew to Goianas, then went overland to Brasilia -> Belo Horizonte -> Ouro Preto -> Rio -> Paraty -> Sao Paulo, with a bunch of smaller towns in between as well. Overall the smaller towns generally felt pretty safe, it's only really in the big cities that you have to be careful. We mostly stuck to semi-touristy areas, bailed if there was no locals around, caught Ubers everywhere, and we didn't really go out much at night beyond coming back from dinner after sunset (we're too old for that kind of thing these days!). Looking back it was basically 10/10, we had a great time and saw a lot of incredible stuff (beautiful scenery, gorgeous old towns, modern architecture etc). Super friendly people - we did a guided tour of some famous house where the guide didn't speak English, but one lady from the group just volunteered to translate for us for the entire time! We bought her some beers afterwards as a thank you. But yeah, would highly recommend - just be careful!
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Dec 10, 2022 03:33
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Dominoes posted:Does anyone know how to buy a SUBE card in Buenos Aires? I've been to a station and ~10 shops/lotteries; all out. I’ve heard they can be a pain to find, but when we were in BA back in July we got them from the first subway window we tried. Can’t quite remember which station, but we were staying right near Teatro Colón, so it would have been either Lavalle or 9 de Julio I think.
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Dec 16, 2022 16:21
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I was in CDMX back in January and yeah locals were taking it super seriously back then as well. The only people who weren't wearing masks were gringos, naturally. We actually travelled across most of Mexico aside from the northern deserts and mask wearing was extremely common basically everywhere except the beach areas of Quintana Roo. The temperature readings were hilarious though, I had one that came up as like 29 degrees which is basically rigor mortis levels of cold. Oh and one place they wouldn't let me in because I came up at like 39.1 degrees (after walking around Chapultepec Park for a couple of hours in the blazing sun), so I went and held a can of Coke against my wrist, went back and scanned at ~33 degrees which they were happy with  With the masks, we sort of figured that westerners assume their travel insurance/dinero/whatever will buy the best health care to get them out of trouble if they get sick, while the average Mexican is probably under no illusions about the access to and quality of healthcare they'd get. Also interesting - we noticed in the 3 months across South America, locals basically only wore masks in their home towns. For example in BA, locals wore masks most of the time. But elsewhere in Argentina, people clearly on holiday never bothered masking up. Weird. Locals cooking churrasco on the grill? Masks. People hopping off a coach to buy some? No masks - ever.
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Dec 29, 2022 13:49
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I’ve actually read a couple of studies that suggest aircraft are surprisingly low risk for covid transmission, mainly because they’re designed to circulate the air every few minutes through hospital-grade filters. And that the high seat backs (particularly in economy) act as a barrier to the spread of virus particles. Consequently you’re more likely to get covid on a plane in business class, where the seats are lower and people/assistants move around a lot more. But yeah that’s all kinda moot when you’re going through security/immigration, packing together at the boarding gate etc.
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Dec 30, 2022 23:30
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I wouldn't call CDMX overrated, particularly, but tbh I think 12 nights is definitely overdoing it. I think it's more of a 7-8 nights place, max, unless you're there to visit family and friends or something. A couple of things I'd recommend that I didn't see you mention: - I assume you've been to the Templo Mayor museum? It's right off Zocalo next to the Cathedral - not much left above ground thanks to the conquistadors, but there's some cool artifacts etc there - We didn't go to Frida Kahlo's house since most people said it's not much value, but the Diego Rivera house was pretty good - A couple blocks north of the Cathedral is the Secretaría de Educación Pública building, which has a central facing courtyard with three levels of murals, telling the story of Mexico, it's most famous sons & daughters, the Revolution and civil war, and so on. Definitely worth an hour or two if you're at all into art, and not really on the tourist radar - I'm sure you've been to the Palacio de Bellas Artes, but directly across Cardenas on the corner of Avidena 5 de Mayo is an old bank building (currently a post office) with a stunning belle epoque interior - And of course at the western end of Alameda Park there's the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, which has that awesome mural saved from ruins of a hotel in the 1985 earthquake (note that there's basically nothing else here) A bit further afield: - the university campus UNAM has some cool buildings, particularly the ones covered in outdoor artwork - Xochimilco is a semi-rural area on the southern outskirts where the farms and canals are basically still from the pre-Columbian era. Nice spot to just hire a colourful boat and cruise around the canals for a couple hours sipping Modelo or whatever - There's a few monarch butterfly sanctuaries a few hours outside CDMX, might be worth looking into a tour out to those? I don't think there's any public transport out that way, and I think the roads go through some semi-sketchy areas (though the sanctuaries themselves are fine) If you don't mind losing out on a paid-up night at your hotel, Puebla and Cuernavaca are easily reachable for an overnight trip and good for a change of scenery. Puebla in particular had some excellent food, and the Cholula ruins too.
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Dec 31, 2022 04:48
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Yeah Uber loving sucks as a company and in general, but it is an absolute lifesaver when you’re travelling in a country where you don’t speak the language. Having fares set remotely is also a huge benefit, so you know what’s you’re getting into (and if no Ubers are available you’ve got a reference point to negotiate with the local taxi mafia). With Cabo specifically, I haven’t been but wikivoyage suggests the cheapest way is either organising through your hotel, or lining up a private transport option like a shuttle bus kind of thing. $85 sounds outrageous though!
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Jan 11, 2023 00:23
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The only person I know who visited the Pantanal went on a 4-5 day expedition from Cuiabá in Mato Grosso state. That was a few years ago though, maybe things have changed since then
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Mar 7, 2023 09:08
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Lady Gaza posted:Iguazu Falls is amazing. If you go, make sure you go to both the Brazilian and Argentine sides. Yep, 100% agree with both of those - Iguazu was one of the standouts from three months in South America. In Peru I quite enjoyed Arequipa as well as Cusco, and some of the other ruins near Macchu Picchu are quite good too (like Ollantaytambo). Buenos Aires is a great city with heaps to see and do. The most frustrating thing is that you can't use the banking system at all (unless you're happy to pay 2x the going rate for everything). In Brazil, if you like small towns I'd recommend some of the old colonial towns like Paraty, Ouro Preto and others. Galapagos is a great place, but there's not really any way to do it super cheaply. Flights in are expensive (we bought a cheap "Ecuadorians only" flight out by mistake, but nothing ever happened over it), there's extra taxes for the environment of course, and then once you're there the hotels and expenses aren't cheap either. There's cool stuff to do on the main island, like the Charles Darwin research station, and you can grab a cab/tour out to some of the other tortoise places. Each of the islands basically has different "attractions" - the penguin ones are further away and usually need an overnight boat trip (or staying in the smaller island). We did a trip out to the blue-footed booby island (lots of frigate-birds too), and on another day we did snorkelling with sea lions (and turtles) which was absolutely amazing. I'd strongly recommend going, because the environmental conditions aren't going to get better, and it's probably not going to get any cheaper either.
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May 1, 2023 12:15
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When did you visit Machu Picchu? We were there in June last year and it didn't feel especially crowded. Sure it was busy, but I kinda expected that as one of the world's most recognisable attractions (and unlike say Rome or Paris or New York, it's not a big area so all the tourists are in the same spot). They introduced timed tickets and a daily cap on visitor numbers, so maybe it's just not as crowded anymore? I just flicked back through my photos and most only have few/no people in them - it took a little bit of patience iirc, but you didn't have to wait ages for people to move. The first overlook point (with the classic view, the one you're picturing right now) was busy, but again you could pretty easily find a spot to squeeze in and get photos. Maybe it was still the pandemic effect, but we found it pretty fine. Maybe the late afternoon timeslot helped? I can't remember exactly what time we went in, but something like 1-2pm maybe? Late enough that the "gotta get in early to beat the crowds" crowd had left for the day.
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May 2, 2023 13:29
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Yeah, we went Panama - Peru - Bolivia - Argentina - Uruguay - Argentina - Paraguay - Brazil - Ecuador - Panama - USA - Australia, and I don’t think we were ever asked for proof of onward travel. But again, we’re a middle-aged white couple with Australian passports, so we aren’t exactly an overstay risk for those places.
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May 3, 2023 23:35
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 02:57 |
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EricBauman posted:Yeah, I'm definitely going to take it easy for at least a day and a half after arrival. In my experience, travelling westwards is much easier, timezone-wise, than travelling west to east. If it helps, I've done a shitload of long haul flights and I basically get zero jetlag with the following: - no sleeping tablets - once the plane takes off, set your watch/phone to the destination time and eat/sleep appropriately (ie don't sleep on the flight if it's daytime where you're going to land) - stick to the new routine as soon as you land, ie stay awake until at least 7-8pm and then have a long sleep until morning. Oh and seconding the recommendation above for the National Archaeology Museum in Chapultepec. It's absolutely fantastic, and one of my favourite museums. It might even be worth seeing first, so you get more context on who were the Aztecs vs the Olmecs vs the Mayans etc, and the various time periods each were around.
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Mar 25, 2024 12:52
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