After months of organising our trip to South America, we finally made it to Brazil. We are scheduled to travel to 7 countries in 5 months in South America starting with Rio de Janeiro on the 4th November and finishing in Colombia at the end of March. When we were planning our trip, we realised that there’s so much to see that this trip could easily take six to twelve months and we would still miss out on a few things. But we have managed to narrow down our itinerary to 5 months and we can’t wait to get to know this amazing continent now.
Below is our route we’re going to take in the coming months. We have booked accommodation up until the beginning of January, but plans might still change for the second half. During our first 2 months, we travel in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina and mainly stay in cities including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. From January, we also explore more rural areas such as the Iguazú Falls in Argentina, the Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia and Machu Picchu in Peru.
Here is our itinerary…
4 – 18 November: Rio de Janeiro
18 -22 November: Ilha Grande
22 – 26 November: Paraty
26 November – 5 December: São Paulo
5 – 8 December: Florianópolis
8 – 10 December: Porto Alegre
11 – 16 December: Montevideo
16 – 17 December: Colonia
17 – 5 January: Buenos Aires
6 – 9 January: Iguazú Falls
10 – 13 January: Salta
13 – 16 January: San Pedro Atacama (Chile)?
16 – 19 January: Uyuni salt flat
19 – 22 January: Potosi
22 – 24 January: Sucre
24 – 27 January: Cochabamba
27 – 31 January: La Paz
1 -3 February: Isla del Sol/Copacabana
3 – 5 February Puno
5 – 9 February : Cusco
8 February: Machu Picchu
Colca Canyon?
9-12 February : Huacachina
12 – 17 February : Lima
Huayhuash? Huarez?
17-22 February : Trujillo 
22 – 25 February : Guayaquil
25 Feb – 3 March: Galapagos Islands
3 – 6 March: Quito
6 – 10 March: Bogota
10 – 14 March: Medellin
14 – 21 March: Cartagena
4 Comments
Julie Cao
19. February 2018 at 4:32 amThanks for putting this itinerary together! I agree that South America is an amazing continent and there is so much to see and always not enough time. I planned to visit 7 countries for six months, but ended up only visiting five. I had a very hard time traveling in Argentina (financial issues and ATM) and I planned to travel there for a month and left after 12 days, but you definitely need to visit Chile! This is my most favorite country and I spent three months there. And I believe you would love it too had you make a visit.
Sina Meyer
3. March 2018 at 10:29 amWow, 6 months – that’s amazing. I wish we had made it to Chile but decided to go a different route. Sorry to hear that you had issues in Argentina – only stayed there for a month because we found it really expensive, but love to go back to hike in Patagonia followed by a trip to Chile. There is still so much to see in South America 🙂
Dave - Man Vs. Globe
19. April 2017 at 6:41 amGreat itinerary! I spent 8 months in South America and there is still so many places that I didn’t get to see. I’d be interested to know if you managed to stick to this or if there are any places you added/didn’t make it to?
Sina Meyer
19. April 2017 at 3:26 pmI know what you mean, South America has so much to offer – you could travel there for years! As for our itinerary, we managed to stick to our plans for the first 2 months but for the second half, we had a few changes along the way. We decided not to go to Chile and enter Bolivia from Argentina to do the salt flats tour from Tupiza. We skipped a few places in Peru such as Huacachina and in Colombia, we added a few cities such as Popayan, Cali and Santa Marta to see more of the country and avoid long overnight bus rides. It worked out very well and we left South America on the 31 March at the end. You must have seen a lot more in your 8 months though 🙂