Rio/Cusco/Buenes Aires

Wallko

Hi guys,

Need some help here for an absolute travel idiot. Any help would be greatly appreciated. By the way if there is some really good forums or websites that answer all of my questions below, feel free to just link me to them

Looking to go to south america in september for a month. Just so you know what I looking for, Im going with a group of 6 lads (all early 20s) and boozing and nightlife are high on the agenda! Also we are all working, making decent money, so scrapping pennies isnt really a concern. ie would rather take a flight than a 12hrs bus ride etc.

At the moment from talking with one friend who was there, we are thinking about Rio, Buenes Aires and Cusco. Just looking to get some standard questions answered.

Which way is the best to do it. ie fly to rio, then cusco, fly home from buenes?

What is the best sites/airlines for booking flights?

Is there any places in these cities, or close to them, that you would recommend going from what were looking for.

What are the main sites/airlines for the internal flights?

Is that enough places given a month? How long would you spend in each of these places? Where else would you go?

Feck this. Bottom line is if you were planning this holiday what would you recommend.

Thanks in advance
Dermot

Gaz

What are your interests, natural sights, historic sights , hiking ?

You could party in Rio, fly to Cusco (I would try for a stop over in Lima though, thats another mad place , great craic) Do the inca Trail to Machu Pichu then fly to B.A. , which is an aweosme city. But seeing as you have a month you could fit in a good bit more. Just depends on what your into ...

dory

Make sure you leave a bit of tine in Cusco before you start the Inca Trail to get used to the altitude. Also, hangovers seem to be worse at altitude!
I would try to fit in Iguazu Falls. I know it's only a load of waterfalls (245 or something), but they really are great. You can go white water rafting and repeling there which was cool.

In Peru, I would try fit in Huacachina for sand boarding. Even if you didn't go sandboarding you can get sand buggies which are great. Like a rollarcoaster speeding over the sand dunes in the desert. If you're fitting in Lima you could go to Huacachina on a day trip. It's maybe 3/4 hours south.

As for websites/airlines. I use the Lonely Planet, but it's really not great as a message board. Or TripAdvisor and Bootsnall.com, they're pretty good.

LAN is who I flew with in South America. You can get lucky. Lima-Cusco was $57 for me. Sao Paulo to Lima was €350 or something like that.

There's loads of great places to go in Argentina. Far south if you want to see a glacier, Mendoza is you're into wine tasting, Bariloche for chocolate and trekking in the snow. In September you could do some skiing.

You won't fit in everything I've mentioned but there is a lot to do. Just don't really know what you're into.

Also, while in Cusco you should go horse riding. I hate horses, and getting up on one freaked me out. But to be trotting over the Andes with no one around for miles was pretty spectacular. You can also go white water rafting there.

Have fun!

Meathlass

You sounds like you've nothing booked so far so you've two options. (Just remember that Sept is the off season in Chile/Argentina as it's their Winter. Doesn't affect Peru that much as it's mostly international tourists). Don't underestimate the distances involved and the affects of altitude and definately learn some Spanish (it's an easy language to get the basics of).

1.Concentrate on the eastern coast ie. fly in and out of Buenos Aires or into BA and out of Sao Paulo (this is the cheapest option for Ireland) Start in BA, great party city but lots of culture and history as well. It might be too cold to do water sports in Sept but if not there are lots of places just south of BA. Definately go to Igazu Falls, amazing place. From there you can head up into Brazil and do a 3 day tour of the Pantanal (large swamp like area in Southwestern Brazil - lots of animals, better than Amazon) and then on to Sao Paulo for a night to relax (not a great city imho). Rio is amazing, you could easily spend a week here. There is so much to do, my favourite city in the world so far. If you want you can drink yourself silly into the early hours every night. Within a few hours of Rio along the coast are places like Paraty and Ilhe Grande which are great places to relax by day and party the rest of the time. This would be a good month's trip; not overly hectic pace but still fitting alot in.

2. This is my perfered option but takes military planning and might be hard trying to keep such a big group on trek. You could start at either end. It's basically Santiago-Nazca-Cusco-La Paz-Uyuni-Salta-(Barlioche)-Buenos Aires. Fly into Santiago in Chile, get the bus across the border to nazca, do the Nazca lines and maybe go to Huachacina for some sandboarding as dory suggested. From Nazca get overnight bus to Cusco (about 13 hours). I wouldn't recommend the trek but if you're interested you'll need a few days to acclimatise in Cusco first and then 4 days for the trek itself. You can just as easily get the train up to MP and see it yourself, stopping off at other sites along the way. If you do want to go on the trek you need to get it organised fast. I know that June, July and parts of August are already full. There are only so many permits issued a day and these are booked up months in advance. This is only for the trek though; you can visit the site just by paying the entrance fee at the nearby village Agua Calientes.

From Cusco get the bus to Puno and see Lake Titicaca and the Uros Island (reed islands). Get bus to La Paz, nice city, very poor and wierd smell everywhere. Altitude sickness hit me like a brick there and took me a month to get over it. The rum and cokes for 50c don't help either - altitude sickness and a hangover are not pleasant. From La Paz get overnight bus to Uyuni (12 hours, very uncomfortable, dirt tracks, think there's a train as well). Do a 3 day salt plains tour (amazing scenary, about $50) which drops you at San Pedro de Atacama just inside the Chilean border.

From there you can go to Salta, mountain city, good outdoorsy stuff I'm told (didn't make it there myself) From Salta you can head south to Barlioche (very expensive alpine village, very popular with Argentinians and Chileans). There are lots of 'alpine villages' along the spine of the Andes and in the Lake district but public transport is very sparse between them and expensive. Last stop Buenos Aires where you could easily spend 5 days sightseeing and relaxing. As you can see you're packing alot in here (4 countries) but it's very doable. I find the lonely planet website very helpful when planning trips. Go to main page and then Thorn Tree forum where south america has it's own branch. You can read everything but you need to register to post a question.

Wallko

Seriously everyone thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to write back

Too clarify what were looking for. The main thing really is nightlife/craic. After that would be outdoors stuff like white water rafting etc. The winetasting regions, looking at glaciers, salt flats etc really wouldnt interest my mates. Think we will do cusco by train as someone suggested. 4 Days trekking would be too much like hard work for my friends!

So if you were looking at rio, buenes aires, cusco. What way would you do it? Say we flew into Buenes aires. Can we get a flight from there to Cusco? Then from Cusco to Rio? How much roughly would these costs and where could i book them?

I keep hearing the Iguazo falls? Is it out of the way? As in would it take long to get to from Rio or Buenes?

Is there anywhere else in Brazil or Argentina that you would recommend in terms of nightlife/craic?

Thanks again

Meathlass

Wallko wrote: »

Seriously everyone thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to write back

Too clarify what were looking for. The main thing really is nightlife/craic. After that would be outdoors stuff like white water rafting etc. The winetasting regions, looking at glaciers, salt flats etc really wouldnt interest my mates. Think we will do cusco by train as someone suggested. 4 Days trekking would be too much like hard work for my friends!

So if you were looking at rio, buenes aires, cusco. What way would you do it? Say we flew into Buenes aires. Can we get a flight from there to Cusco? Then from Cusco to Rio? How much roughly would these costs and where could i book them?

I keep hearing the Iguazo falls? Is it out of the way? As in would it take long to get to from Rio or Buenes?



Is there anywhere else in Brazil or Argentina that you would recommend in terms of nightlife/craic?

Thanks again

International flights within South America are very expensive. I paid 600 euros to fly from Quito to Santiago rtn (5 hours flying time). THe national chilean airline are lan airlines, in brazil you can try Gol. Alot of the airlines in south america have different rates for locals and foreigners, you need your national id card to book the cheaper flights so no way to get around it. If you're just looking for nightlife then do your mates really want to go to see Cusco and MP? It's going to cost alot, the altitude will take a lot out of you too. All flights to Cusco go through Lima so you will have to change flights there. You're basically going the entire width of the continent so it's going to be expensive. I found trailfinders good for organising flights but mine was very straightforward. Into Caracas and out of Rio for 1000 euros. The salt flats really are amazing but each to their own.

Rio to Ba on a bus is 40 hours. The Falls are about 24 hours from BA and 14 hours from Rio. Think it's about $150 from Rio to Igazu on the bus but you get a cama seat which means you can put it down a good bit, there's food and movies as well .... still hell though. You can fly from BA to Igazu then on to Sao Paulo and then to Rio. It's a very popular flight with tourists. I bused it but I know the Sao Paulo to Rio service is like a shuttle and cost me about $100 one way on a Friday evening. I just turned up at the airport and paid. There are flights every 30 mins. I think you'll find a whole month's drinking in Rio, Cusco and BA pretty expensive as these are all touristy places. Still a lot cheaper than home obviously but nothing like the Andean countries. Some places in Rio in particular rival Dawson st.! Think a vodka and a mixer cost about 3 euro but I know the local brand of beer (dos equines, brahma etc) are cheaper.

Just did a quick search there on www.lan.com for you. Buenos aires to Cusco with a change and 2 hour wait in Lima cost $450 and takes 7 hours in total (priced 11 sept, morning flight). The flight from Cusco to Rio costs $900, again with a stopover in Lima (for 2 hours) and Chile (for 6 hours) and takes 19.5 hours (17th sept). Obviously a travel agent might be able to find you a better way of getting from Lima to Rio but you will have to go through either Santiago or Buenos Aires as there are no direct flights. The lan page starts in English but once you put in your cities it switches to Spanish for the results, easy enough to read but you mightn't feel confident booking it in Spanish just in case. BTW the planes from Cusco to Lima only carry a minimal amount of baggage so you'll properly have to store it in airport in Lima until you come back. There're just small planes. I think your best bet is to go into Trailfinders and chat to them.

Meathlass

Sorry I just realised that I should have checked your end destination as being SP instead of Rio as that's the main international airport so there might be direct flights from Lima to SP.

dory

Wallko wrote: »

Seriously everyone thanks so much. Thanks for taking the time to write back

It's just no one else wants to hear us ramble on about our travelling stories.

Your main problem is that this is like an American saying "I'm going for a month to London, Rome and Warsaw, except without Ryanair and the rail system. It's all quite far apart. But I guess if you're going that far you might as well go where you want.
Also, Rio and Cusco don't have a lot of direct flight. For Rio, have to go through Sao Paulo, for Cusco, Lima. That puts up thew price.

That's all I know. :cool:

Have fun!

Wallko

Again thanks a million. Starting to rethink Cusco. As you said it may not be what my friends are after. Will give it some thought. Just picked up Footprint 2008 South America addition which will help also. Will keep you posted

Meathlass

Wallko wrote: »

Again thanks a million. Starting to rethink Cusco. As you said it may not be what my friends are after. Will give it some thought. Just picked up Footprint 2008 South America addition which will help also. Will keep you posted

Check out the lonely planet forum thorn tree as well, very helpful.

paddylonglegs

Wow,this already sounds like a chore!

Will be in SA from Jan 2009 til end of March.Flying into Santiago and out of BA. Have a few ideas of where we want to go (Santiago,Inca trail,Amazon or other equiv.,Sao Paulo) but haven't looked into how we are going to get there or anything.Looks like a lot of organisation needed for comfortable travel.Better start now then!

Helpful thread btw

paddylonglegs

One question Meathlass, for any excursions in SA that you booked beforehand in Ireland,could you have booked any of them in SA and save money,or was it better you booked them in ireland?Just looking at the GAP adventures brochure. Alot of the excursions are pretty cool.Any thoughts?