10 Tips You NEED For Traveling to South America

we just spent the last three months in South America and these are some of the things that surprised us and things that you should know before visiting but before we get into it make sure you go back and watch all of our videos on all of our adventures through South America and make sure to hit that subscribe button so first and foremost it is crucial to know some Spanish yes Google Translate is really nice and very helpful but knowing some basic Spanish like numbers time and basic questions like how much where is it do you have will come in handy and you'll use them all the time a lot of people in South America don't speak any English so knowing that basic Spanish goes a long way with Google translate a nice feature though is you can download certain languages so when you are offline or don't have any service you can still utilize the app and if you do plan on being in South America for a really long time check out some of the Spanish schools they have a lot of options you can go take classes for like a week two weeks it's a really good way to get acclimated meet some people and learn some Spanish when we are traveling to South America there was a lot of concern about our safety because of the history of the continent and the countries that we are planning on traveling to but after having spent three months in this region of the world we can definitely say that we felt very safe throughout most of our travels and the area in general is a relatively safe place but of course there are some caveats to that just like there are in any other areas of the world so one thing you should always do before traveling is be sure to check out the government websites and these websites provide information on safety places that you should not be traveling to no matter what and general scams and things that you should be aware of before you are traveling to those things so that's something that we always do just to be aware of what is happening in those countries and in South America one of the biggest scams unfortunately is still robbery and of course there are things that you can do to prevent that some things that we did is not show off any of our valuables you know keep jewelry at home be extra aware of our surroundings especially at night those sorts of things will help you from being a Target and another common scam is related to unregistered cats and taxis so definitely be very aware of where you are picking up a cab and picking up a taxi just because it's a yellow car with some signage on the side does it mean that it's a registered cab and unfortunately there have been cases where these drivers will drive off with your belongings or sometimes they take you on what is called a money ride which means that they will kind of hold you up with some sort of weapon drive you around to all the different ATMs and make you take out money until your card is absolutely exhausted so those are some things to be aware of of course it sounds a little bit scary but definitely do not let this deter you from traveling in this area of the world because it was absolutely incredible we had no issues ourselves and we definitely recommend it to anybody to come explore this incredible part of the world luckily cabs aren't the only way to get around in South America both Uber and cabify are really good options but note with Uber it is illegal in Colombia but you can still use it in the major cities like Bogota Medellin and Cartagena but we recommend not using it from the airport because when you do use an Uber police can stop that car and have you get out and there's more police and a lot more people monitoring at the airport so if they stop the car and you're just on the outskirts you have to get out and then you have to find new transportation to wherever you're going so we recommend not using Uber from the airports so attack is the best option when getting transportation out of the airport but when you do get that taxi they don't use meters in Peru Ecuador or Colombia so make sure you negotiate a price before you get in just to avoid any issues once you get there and another thing to note with Ubers when you do call them especially in Colombia don't be surprised if the Uber driver asks you to sit in the front seat that's the best way to make it look like you're just getting in the car like your friends and you're not using them for the Uber service when traveling between cities in South America your two best options though are going to be buses and flying one thing to note with taking buses though is yes they are a lot cheaper but it takes a lot longer to get places in South America if you look at a map you might think oh these two cities aren't very far away from each other but it might take two three even four times longer than what it would take in like America because a lot of the roads are two-lane highways they're wrapping around the mountains they don't have the big large freeways so it takes a lot longer to get between cities and if you are prone to motion sickness you should know that a lot of the drivers in South America are very aggressive they like to speed up very quickly and then slam on the brakes there's a lot of windy roads there's a lot of speed bumps out in the middle of these windy roads so there's a lot of speeding up slowing down so just be ready if you do get motion sickness it's probably going to happen on some of these longer car rides the other really good option for getting between cities in a country is to fly so flights can be relatively cheap we got a lot of our tickets for around like fifty dollars including baggage so it is a really good option as well and if you are strapped for time or you're only in a specific country for a short period of time flying is probably going to be the better option because everything moves a little slower in South America so like Brandon said everything runs just a little bit slower in South America people just have a little bit slower pace of life than what we're used to coming from the United States and things running off schedule is basically the norm there some buses will likely be late you know your tour guides might be picking up a little bit later than what they said that they were going to be picking you up they'll probably be unexpected stops on bus rides things like that things that you're not expecting and things just take a lot longer than what you expect them to traffic can also be a big reason for this especially with like buses and that sort of thing like Brandon said there are only two lane roads so if there's an accident or construction or anything like that things can get really backed up and it takes a lot longer to get anywhere also related to that restaurants and stores and things like that may not open up on time or they may not even open up till a little bit later than what you expect them to coming from the states everything opens up seven eight o'clock in the morning things open up just a little bit later in South America usually like 9 or 10 o'clock is the norm and with that we noticed this mainly with restaurants but you'll check like online Google Maps and it'll say it's open and then you get there and it's not open that happened a lot with us so bear that in mind when you are looking for restaurants or stores places like that that don't always open when they say they're going to open and when you are looking for restaurants online note that the menus sometimes aren't completely updated for example the prices might be different the food options are different or when you do get to that restaurant they're not serving that item completely an example of that there were a few times that we went to the same restaurant like two days in a row and we ordered the same item and it just came prepared differently or had a different side one thing we learned pretty quickly though when you go to restaurants you don't have to wait to be seated you just go and sit down yourself tipping is also pretty customary in Peru Ecuador and Colombia it is generally customary to tip about 10 and the hardest thing for us to get used to you always have to ask for the bill and in most cases you'll have to flag down the waiter when it comes to to paying for the bill we noticed that credit cards were only accepted in certain areas we actually did find that Columbia was very card friendly which means having cash is very important so like Brandon said a lot of places only really do accept cash and if they do accept credit card they actually charge a fee on that as well usually it's about five percent sometimes it can be even higher so if you're using your card for every transaction that will definitely add up quickly so having cash is extremely important and with that being said everybody needs cash as well so the ATMs do run out of cash so some tips for that would be to go early and to stock up while you can you also get to save a little bit of ATM fees when you do stock up because you're not going as often but if you do stock up definitely try to split that cash up only have the amount that you need for the day with you and then keep kind of the rest of it in a safe place somewhere in your hotel and your hostel locked up just because like we mentioned earlier robberies are not uncommon so you don't want to lose all of that money if and when you do get money out of the ATM it's generally in big bills but a lot of people really do work for tips so having smaller bills is really important for things like walking tours or guides for your different tours you know paying for that picture with the llama in Peru that sort of thing it's always really good to have smaller bills so definitely try to break those big bills when you can some places that we found were able to do this more often than not were places like grocery stores busy restaurants and a lot of tourists pharmacies things like that another fun little tip is that Ecuador actually uses the US dollar so if you're coming from the US you would be able to just use the cash that you have back home in Ecuador which is very interesting we were not expecting to see that at all so sometimes we did find ourselves burning through our cash a lot faster than we had hoped and that was because we found South America to be a little more expensive than we had thought but that was probably our fault because a lot of times we opted for Comfort over cheap and that was especially true when it came to staying in hostels because we do work remotely we elected to stay in the private rooms versus the dorm rooms just to ensure we always had some place quiet to go for when we had to work also we did eat out for most of our meals yes you can cook in a lot of the hostels but we just our lifestyle we like to go out to eat so we ended up going out to eat way more than we probably should have one thing we should have taken advantage of more was the menu of the day in a lot of places in South America especially for lunch time they have what is called the menu of the day and it is usually like a three four sometimes even five course meal that you get for super super cheap the reason we didn't get the menu of the day a lot though is it's usually served with a lot of meat and we do still try to eat a lot of vegetarian options and we did like to splurge quite a bit and eat the food we wanted to eat so that includes Sushi and Mexican food two things we were surprised about admission fees were a lot more expensive for tourists and cosmetics were very very expensive when you go to a place like a national park the admission fee can sometimes be double or triple the price for tourists compared to the price for the locals also when you do go to National Parks make sure you have your passport with you because they do ask for that to get into a lot of places and when it comes to Cosmetics we notice like things like sunscreen and even face wash were extremely expensive we bought a little tube of face wash that no joke was probably like that big and it cost us like twenty dollars it was crazy expensive so make sure you stock up on those types of cosmetic items at home and bring them with you one thing that we did not think about spending money on when we were coming to South America was public restrooms and public restrooms typically do cost a little bit of money to use they aren't expensive by any means they're probably about 25 cents at most so nothing crazy but still something to think about and another reason why you would need smaller bills sometimes that cost does come with toilet paper Granite it's usually only like one two three sheets so if you gotta do a little bit more of your business you might need a little bit extra but they don't provide that so I definitely always recommend having a stash of toilet paper with you just in case you know disaster strikes a lot of times we notice that a lot of the restrooms also didn't have hand soap so definitely carrying a little bit of soap or some hand sanitizer or something like that would definitely be helpful as well and one of the biggest things when it comes to going to the restroom in South America is that you are not allowed to flush the toilet paper no matter if it's a public restroom a private restroom in like a hotel or a hostel or Airbnb the pipes are not equipped to handle toilet paper so if you were flushing your toilet paper down it would get very easily clogged up and you would end up with a big old mess on your floor in almost all parts of South America it is not safe to drink the water because of different types of viruses that can get into the water we were surprised to find out in some of the bigger cities in Colombia it is safe to drink but make sure you do your research before drinking or using that tap water and if you are ever unsure about the water assume it's not safe to drink typically locals will boil the water which does kill all the bacteria and viruses so when you go to restaurants or the market and you're looking to buy like juice or something that that uses water like on fresh fruit make sure that they are using that filtered water because sometimes the cheap stands will just use tap water and you can get sick from that and another thing to check when it comes to the water there are a lot of vendors and people walking around selling water if you do buy water bottles from them make sure when you open it the cap does like click or you can feel the seal breaking unfortunately some people will just find empty water bottles refill them and then go try to sell them so make sure you don't drink it because a lot of times that will just be tap water we would definitely recommend bringing a filtered water bottle so you don't have to keep purchasing single-use water bottles we have a LifeStraw water bottle that we purchased a few years ago and unfortunately found out when we got here that it does not filter viruses which doesn't help us so we had to purchase water bottles and that cost can add up very quickly some alternatives are using a Grail water bottle which does kill both bacteria and viruses or you can use the LifeStraw and then also purchase iodine tablets which would kill the viruses if you're planning a trip to South America you've probably done a lot of research on the things you want to do and one of the things that has probably come up more than once is doing an incredible hike and Hiking is a very big thing here in South America and for good reason the hikes are absolutely beautiful people and they're up in the mountains but we have found that hiking in South America is a little bit more difficult than hiking back home in the United States and one of the biggest reasons for that is because of the altitude now we did do all of our traveling in Peru Ecuador and Colombia and that is where the Andes mountain range is and those are some of the tallest mountains in the world so a lot of times you'll probably end up doing hikes in really high elevation we were doing hikes in 16 000 feet which is very hard to breathe up there you feel very tired you can get altitude sickness where you're feeling nauseous and things like that so definitely be prepared for that if you do plan on doing a lot of those hikes they are incredible and definitely worth it but a little bit harder than what we're used to coming from the United States a couple more things that made the hikes a little bit harder is that the paths are not very well marked so it can be pretty easy to get lost unless you're going with a guide another thing is that they are also not very well maintained and like I mentioned because a lot of the hike they're up in the Andes Mountains when you get up that high the weather can be extremely unpredictable so always make sure you pack a bunch of different layers it can be cold in the morning hot in the afternoon and then freezing cold and raining at night so always make sure you have different layers and things like that and are prepared for any type of weather so that wraps up the 10 things that you need to know before going to South America we really hope that this helps you with planning your trip and knowing what to expect when you are traveling to South America we had an incredible time in our three months there and honestly we recommend anybody travel there the people are friendly the views are amazing food's delicious I mean we could go on and on it's definitely one of our favorite places that we've ever been to but make sure to subscribe because we are still traveling we actually have made it to our new destination we are in South Africa and we've been here for a couple weeks enjoying this beautiful country we are actually staying right now for free on a farm in the middle of South Africa so be sure to stay tuned for our next video because we're going to explain exactly how we scored this incredible accommodation but until then we'll see you guys on the road looking at the menu it was like it's like going right in it was right on there so when you do it no you look surprisingly crawling you are laughs [Music]

Channel: The Wandering Wings

Views: 17,913

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Id: bmjtKLjkJOY

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2022