Flight Recommendations for South America Trip

perez on 29/09/2014 - 09:45

Hi all,

My wife and I are planning to spend 6 months in South America in the new year leaving around the end of Jan.

Would anybody be able to recommend a cost effective way of booking our flights?

We are thinking of having a mini holiday in Aus (Hamilton Island / a couple of nights on a liveaboard), then flying to Auckland and spending some time there, checking out Bay of Islands, then perhaps flying to Santiago from there. From Santiago we will head down to Patagonia for some trekking and a kayak trip, then work our way northwards. We will probably travel overland for much of the trip since we have plenty of time. We are planning to do the Inca trail as part of our trip, so peru is definitely on the itinerary.

We want to visit some friends in New York at the end of the trip, so we'd look to fly form somewhere in South America to the US, then a final flight from NYC to London at the end of our trip.

Any suggestions? Are there any suitable tickets which might save us money? Like a round-the-world but without arriving back in Aus afterwards?

Thanks in advance all, look forward to hearing any suggestions.

Travel

Comments

  • Evil-Elmo on 29/09/2014 - 16:51

    If you fly in on LAN you can get a discount on their 'air-pass' tickets for internal flights. We used them a fair bit and they worked out well. Well priced, but not super cheap.

    Check out Alpaca Expeditions for the Inca Trail. They're really good and treat their porters really well (many, including some of the big names, most certainly do not). The other one which appeared to treat their porters well was Llama Path. Can't comment on what they're like though.

    Lake Titicaca is ok, but very touristy. If doing my trip again I'd give it a miss, but we had fairly tight time constraints. What I would do given more time is some trekking in the Colca Canyon. We went to see the condors, which was awesome, but once there I really wanted to go down into it.

    We only really did Peru, but had an awesome time. Would love to go back and see more of South America. Feel free to come back after your trip and tell me what was good or not for the rest :)

  • perez on 02/10/2014 - 20:41
    +1

    Thanks very much! Will check out Alpaca. Can't book 2015 Inca Trail until tickets are released in Jan so have a bit of time to get things in order.

    Will come back and let you know how it goes! :)

  • AL1CE on 10/10/2014 - 00:21

    Go LAM! I flew Business class return $4200 ex Syd as LAM bought out TAN it is your pest option for Peru. Both part of oneworld aliance.

    Be aware there is no business class in South America, and it is a very big country!

    Also Traveling around South America is not as easy as you think, with all flights leaving/returning from hub cities. So plan very carefully if you want to do Peru. I suggest you go straight from Santiago to save time and money.
    Good luck

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