Our South America Trip Begins | Visas, Vaccines, Insurance & Packing (2024)

13 Jan Our South America trip begins! Visas, vaccines, insurance and packing list

Tomorrow we set off for Colombia! We’ve been talking about this South America trip for so many years that it’s taken on a surreal, dream-like quality for me. Now it’s a tangible thing. This time tomorrow we’ll be zooming across the sky to the other side of the world. Here’s a look at how we’ve prepared for this adventure, from buying a new camera to organising insurance, researching visas and compiling our packing list.

Flights to South America

It’s hard to find cheap flights to South America, so we monitored prices for a few months before booking (find out here how we find the best flight deals). In the end, it was cheaper to book two separate flights so we have a three-day layover in Miami, which is a great place to find cheap flights to Latin America from. Here’s how much ours cost:

£425 for a Norwegian Air flight from London Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale including one checked bag (which cost £50), the rest we’ll take on as hand luggage.

£185 for a Spirit Airlines flight from Fort Lauderdale to Cartagena including two checked bags (which cost $21 each).

Total flight cost to South America for two people: £610

South America visa regulations

We haven’t decided exactly where to go in South America yet. Aside from arriving in Cartegena, we have a rough idea that we’ll start by making our way down through Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. It looks like visas for South American countries are pretty generous, here’s what we’ve found out so far (note that the information is for British citizens travelling to South America):

Colombia visa – you get visa-free entry for up to 90 days free, which can be extended by 120 days but can’t exceed 180 days in any 12-month period.

Peru visa – visa-free entry for up to 183 days.

Bolivia visa – visa-free entry for 30 days, which you can extend in the country.

Ecuador visa – visa-free entry for up to 90 days in a year, but you may need to provide proof of onward travel.

Since we’re travelling via a two-day stay in Florida, we also had to apply for an ESTA online, which cost $15 per person and gives you up to 90 days in the USA at a time and is valid for two years.

Vaccinations for South America

Fortunately, we didn’t need to get any new vaccinations for South America as ours were up to date, here’s what we have:

• Hepatitis A
• Hepatitis B
• Tetanus
• Typhoid
• Yellow fever

Rabies vaccinations are recommended for some travellers, for instance if you’re planning to work with animals, but we opted not to get them. You can read about what travel vaccinations we have and information about rabies shots and malaria tablets in this post.

South America insurance travel costs

We never travel without insurance and have used a range of companies over the years. This time we’ve gone with a policy from Explorer Travel Insurance which gives us £5 million medical cover including repatriation costs, £750 baggage cover, £125 passport cover and £1m personal liability cover. Total cost: £190 for two people for 230 days, we’ll extend this if necessary.

This Explorer policy doesn’t offer good enough protection for all our electronics, so we also have PC World insurance for Amy’s Macbook Air, which costs £10 per month. In addition, we have Photoguard insurance for our new camera, Andrew’s Acer laptop and additional cover for the Mac which costs £83 per year.

Since we plan to trek in Peru, we’ll need to get additional insurance to cover hiking at high altitude. We’ll probably get a World Nomads policy for that, which we used for trekking to Everest Base Camp last year. That policy cost us £175 for two people for 15 days of trekking at high altitude.

We’re also hiring a car in Florida for a few days, so we’ve taken out a policy from Insurance4CarHire which will cover our excess if we ever need it and costs just £11 for four days. We’ve used this company for car hire in America as well as on our European road trip and it always works out much cheaper than the insurance car hire company’s offer.

When buying worldwide travel insurance for long trips, check the small print carefully (find out more about travel insurance for long-term travel in this post). For example, our Explorer policy requires us to be UK residents and registered with a doctors’ surgery here, while others state that you need to have been in the UK for at least six months before travelling. We use a price comparison site to find policies and then go direct to the insurer to see if the prices are lower.

Bank accounts for travel

Since publishing our initial post about the best debit cards for travel, Norwich and Peterborough closed their current accounts so we’ve switched to Starling. This new, UK, online-only bank doesn’t charge any fees for using your card abroad and it even gives us some interest. You can move money around easily using the iPhone app, which sends us notifications each time we spend money, stating the exchange rate for us. We’re not sponsored by Starling by the way, we just think it’s the best UK bank account for travellers like us.

We also still have our Halifax credit cards which are really useful for renting cars. Halifax don’t charge anything for using the cards abroad, except when you withdraw cash from ATMs. Read more about how the Halifax Clarity card works in this post. This year we’re also making a more concerted effort to track our travel costs again using the fantastic Trail Wallet app. This is something we’ve become a bit slack about over the last couple of years.

Packing list for our South America trip

Bags

We’re taking our original Osprey backpacks, which are still going strong after five years of travel. However, as our electronics collection has grown, we now also have two small Karrimor daypacks too. The smaller one will be packed away on our flights and the other will be used for carrying our laptops and other electronics.

Osprey Atmos 38L Backpack
Osprey Aura 35L Backpack
Karrimor U-Bahn 30L Daypack
Karrimor U-Bahn 20L Daypack
Compression sacks x 6
Packing Cube
Three combination locks

Clothes

We’re off to some pretty hot countries over the next few months so our clothes will need to be light and cool, which means they take up less space. However, we’ll probably have to pick up some warmer trekking gear in Peru, like we did in Kathmandu when packing for Everest Base Camp.

Andrew

Underwear x 8
Socks x 6 (including 2 hiking)
T-shirts/vests x 10 (including one shirt)
Shorts x 4 (including one pair for running/swimming)
Trousers
Fleece
Montane raincoat
Cap/hat x 2
Sarong (can also be used as a towel)
Buff

Amy

Underwear x 10
Sports bra x 2
Socks x 3
T-shirts/vests x 10
Shorts x 3
Trousers x 3
Yoga pants
Fleece
Light raincoat
Hat
Sarong
Towel
Swimwear
Buff

Footwear

We can let our feet breathe a bit more while we’re in South America, so we’re taking our flip flops and we’ll need some sturdy footwear since we’ll be hiking the Inca Trail in Peru too.

Andrew – 1 pair trainers and 1 pair flip flops
Amy – 1 pair hiking shoes and 1 pair flip flops

Electronics

After five years and a scratched/burnt lens we thought it was about time we replaced our old Panasonic Lumix GF3 camera, so last week we bought a Sony α 5000, which cost us £300. Our laptops are essential for freelance work and blogging and when you add up all the chargers, we travel with quite a pile of electronics these days.

Camera – Sony α 5000, camera case, charger, mini tripod and four SDHC memory cards
Laptops – Apple Macbook Air and Acer Aspire F15 with chargers
Phones – iPhone 6 and iPhone 5 both unlocked, one with a 3 SIM card which allows us to use it as if we were in the UK in many different countries, including the USA, Colombia and Peru.
2 sets of earphones
2 Kindles
11000mAh power bar
Skross PRO PLUS World adapter
HDMI cable (useful for plugging laptop into TVs)
1 Kindle charger
2 iPhone chargers
Te-rich power strip which we mainly use for surge protection
Mouse
USB memory stick

Toiletries and medicines

Eight month supply of Amy’s contact lenses
Contact lens case and travel-size bottles of solution
Amy’s eye glasses
Ear plugs
Eye masks
Moon cup
Toothbrushes and cases
Toothpaste and floss
Comb and hair bands
Face wash
Soap, shower gel and dish
Sponge
Razors
Tweezers
Nail clippers
Scissors
Deodorants
Shampoo and conditioner
Ibuprofen
Paracetamol
Cold and flu medicine
Cystitis medicine
Amy’s migraine medicine
Vitamin B12 tablets
Plasters
Antibacterial hand wash
Insect repellent with Deet
Sun cream factor 50 and 30
Tissues
Shower cap
Vaseline and SPF 30 lib balm

Documents and miscellaneous

Passports and photocopies
Driving Licences
Printed flight bookings
Printed car hire booking
Passport photos
Medical vaccination and immunisation documents
Sungod Sunglasses
Notebooks and pens
Travel hairdryer
Mini sewing kit
Backpack rain covers
Dry bag
Cotton sleeping sacks x 2
Wallet
Earl Grey tea bags
Marmite
Nutritional yeast (great for cooking vegan dishes if we rent an apartment somewhere).

Pin Me For Later!

So, did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments below. By the way, there are affiliate links in this post, so if you click through and buy a product from one of our links, we earn a tiny commission at no extra cost to you. This helps to cover the running costs of our site – thanks!