Hola hola! Blog post number 1!

This is Worldwide Walkies, the travel & trekking blog for Awal and Emma’s big 2025 adventure. Since the 1st Jan 2025, we’ve been in South America, walking and eating, learning and exploring, and generally trying out a life that’s a bit different for us. This is our little corner of the internet where we’ll be keeping a diary of our journey – sharing the experiences of the sunny days, but also the ones that are full of mud, rain and gale force winds. We’ll describe towns that capture our hearts and the ones that we couldn’t wait to get out of. We’ll note down our favourite itineraries, and the ones that, simply put, went to shit!

Maybe you’re here because you’re our mums (hi ma <3), but maybe you’re here because you’re keen to explore some of what South America has to offer – maybe you’re here because you also love to walk internationally and think we could offer a bit of guidance – or maybe you’re here to live vicariously (this was us! years in the making!). Whatever the case – thanks for stopping by. So let’s set the scene…

Click here to take yourself to ‘Short and Sweet’ at the end of the page that summarizes this blog post.

Tell me everything:

Why (and why not) South America?

We were inspired to return to this massive continent after a mini-adventure in 2022, where we spent 5 weeks tripping through Ecuador and Peru (and a tiny bit of Chile). As it turns out, five weeks was only enough for a taster of South America. We fell hard for the landscapes, the food (read: potatoes and corn), and the breadth of culture. We knew we’d be back, with a few key things to either hit or revisit.

The key attraction should be pretty clear: walkies, walkies, walkies. The Andes provide the ultimate stomping ground for trekking, through mountains and valleys, alpine forest and desert, through snow into blistering sun. From the southernmost tip of the continent up through to the transition into Central America, the Andes create a dramatic landscape that has plenty to offer those who love to walk. Patagonia is the obvious example of South American hiking, but mountain range carries stunning opportunities right through to the north of Argentina, and across Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

The alternative landscape is the jungle – although, the hot, humid landscape doesn’t sound quite as appealling for multiday treks, the Amazon offers opportunities to experience nature in unique and exciting ways through tours and – the biodiversity is a huge draw card for the region, and the natural experience is a stark contrast to the high altitudes of the Andes. The most popular places for tours are Brazil and Peru, but we’ve researched some opportunities across Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia.

Backpacking for a year requires a certain price band – either taken from your belly & activity count, or taken from the currency of the countries you pick. South America can be a reasonably cheap place to travel, specifically through the northern countries. Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela offer awesome bang for your buck, although the latter two tend to have issues with safety, and it’s important to remember than any place super touristic will change the money you spend. Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina have more productive economies which have led to higher prices (to us, comparable to Aotearoa in many ways). They are especially high in the far reaches of Patagonia – so it’s important to keep the variation in mind when budgeting.

We’ve felt that South American cultures are truly genuine and unique, and in some cases untouched. From pre-Incan through to post-colonial South America, the history is fascinating and inspiring, horrible and bloody, and in some places, still strongly represented. The indigenous people of South America retain a strong presence in many countries, through villages, markets and traditional dress. There are opportunities to discover these cultures for yourself by taking a responsible tour, or simply being present in the moment and willing to have a new conversation. Every country has a different story to be heard, a dance to be learned, or a belief system to understand.

Part of that culture is, as always, food. We love to eat, and we’ll always find something that inspires us – but we know that South America is probably not the place for every foodie. With the exception of Lima in Peru taking on a more international influence, the traditional foods are rooted in their many types of potatoes and corn, with fewer fresh vegetables and deeper flavours. Homely meals are the core of South American cuisine, and they don’t have the breadth that you may find elsewhere.

How does a year of travel begin?

It took a hot minute to get our things in order but eventually – savings, friends, family, frisbee (totally Emma’s fault) – all aligned and gave us the opportunity to quit our jobs and exchange a cosy Aotearea life for something a bit more unknown.

The experience that we gained on our first trip to South America made the decision easier. We had a reasonable estimate on budget (three months in, and it’s going about as well as planned!), we’d already done a fair bit of research (a massive and overwhelming task for the size of the continent), and we were already confident that we would absolutely love the cultures and experiences. 

As mentioned – South American countries have a wide range of budget types. For example, a ‘shoestring budget’ – the cheapest hostels, home-cooked meals, free activities, limited tours – will look very different when you cross from Chile into Bolivia. For example, we hardly ate out in Chile (less than 10 meals over nearly 7 weeks), but in Bolivia it is almost cheaper to eat out. This does mean that South America has something to offer every budget type, and every length of trip. Besides home cooking, we think there are two key factors to travelling cheaply – travel slowly and hike a lot. Travelling slowly almost always ends up being more economical – less time paying for transport, more time to spread activities over multiple days, more chances to visit a region in its off-season. Hiking is truly a great shoestring budget activity – if you’ve invested in your own gear, you’ll only be paying for transport (or just hitch!) park entry, and possibly campsites. 

We budgeted a year of travel based on our monthly spend in NZ, with a cross-check from the spend of our last trip, which ends up being about 1000NZD a week (500NZD each), which at the time of budgeting was about 600USD (300USD each). Now it’s more like 550USD, but that’s an economics gripe for Awal to tell another time! We then budgeted a bit extra – if you know you’ll be going to places like Patagonia, the Amazon and the Galapagos, you know those will be bigger chunks out of the budget. We’ll post more details on cost breakdown per country as we go along.

Planning for a year is a weird sensation. We are both very structured people, so we knew we should take this year-long opportunity to be more open-ended. However, the purely care-free, ‘let the adventure find you’ outlook generally leads to a massive problem – spending a disproportionate amount of time stuck in your hostel room, rushing to complete that research on your phone! There’s a balance to be struck to provide freedom and flexibility. For us, that meant a key question – “what matters most?” – well, clearly it’s Walkies. That gave us a framework – knowing that there are certain multiday hikes that we want to hit provides us the countries we wanted to visit. Having a general idea of what your key spots are helps that structure. Maybe it’s the most beautiful locations for photos; are you a birder or after a particular animal sighting – are there certain dishes you’d love to eat – maybe you want to learn the choice slang from every dialect of Spanish across South America – do you want to explore the best nightlife? Any of these could give you a starting point to plan your trip; maybe you aren’t sure, but picking one to begin can really help focus your planning!

While planning out a whole year is weird, packing for a whole year is even stranger. This is something that we do not have nailed down!! Packing up your whole life into a bag each is hard, but what’s harder is carrying the weight of something you don’t use often enough. Time on the trail will tell you what’s essential and what’s not – our best advice for now is that you will overpack. As our priority was hiking, we have big packs full of all of our own gear – tent, sleeping mat, bags, liners, and a full set of hiking clothes. To be fair, everything else is excess – but it’s nice to look cute in a city, and it’s hard to start a blog without a laptop! We’ll make another post one day (if we ever figure out a system that actually works…)

Where do you start?

From New Zealand, “where do I start” has an easy answer – the only place you can fly direct is Santiago de Chile (although – we flew via Melbourne as it was somehow considerably cheaper). So at 8am on the 1st January 2025, we left NZ and at 11am we arrived in Santiago! 

Now Santiago… honestly – not the greatest place to start a journey. Since our visit in 2022, Santiago has seen some tough times, with regular protests and changes to population demographics, many neighborhoods have become quite dangerous, even in the day, and there’s a definite uncomfortable feeling in 2025 that we didn’t sense in 2022. It’s a shame, because we knew it as a cool city – with museums and cheap food, tidy cafes and funky suburbs, cool traditional mercados and a metro to boot! Not to mention the walkies – at the foot of the Andes, it’s got some awesome treks nearby. It was almost a culture shock to return and find it in its current state.

Thankfully, we didn’t have much time planned in Santiago – just enough to ride the teleférico and purchase some new clothes (not something we love doing, but LATAM lost our bags for 4 days…). Unfortunately even getting out of Santiago was a dodgy affair – the Bus Terminal for southern buses (Terminal Sur) is in a renowned bad neighborhood, with poor security around the terminal. Get out of your taxi and get in the terminal ASAP was the advice we read, and it worked out fine. It is not advised to walk to this terminal, especially in the evening!

Where next: From Santiago down into Patagonia, we would advise two main routes: you can either go down through Chile and back up through Argentina, or travel right to the bottom and make your way back up, crossing the borders as you need (or vice versa). We’ll put a bit more detail in another post, but either is manageable and gives you opportunities to get plenty of walking in! From Patagonia – just don’t forget that it is a huge continent. Fitting everything in is a tough ask. Chile is long, Argentina is long and wide – so hitting the key spots in both would take a long time, on a lot of buses. We nearly spent three months just across the two countries, and didn’t see any of central Argentina.

From either Argentina or Chile, you can cross over into Bolivia, then through to Peru then Ecuador and Colombia pretty smoothly. This route works both ways – starting in Colombia and working your way down, although in that case you’re working from cheapest to most expensive countries – so keep that in mind on your budgeting!

The elephant in the room: we’ve missed a big contender. We are not travelling through Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela or Brazil. The former two are cited to be quite similar to Argentina, in culture and price. Venezuela is not a very safe place to travel, so it’s off the list! As for Brazil – we would love to, but it is just so massive. We’ve heard it is a cheap place to travel, but is intimidating in its enormity (and neither of us speak a word of Portuguese!). We decided to not bite off more than we could chew – and one Brazilian chap that we met confirmed our suspicions by saying we’d need at least two months in Brazil. However, we did do some research: all the potential routes mentioned above are in the maps below.

A Few Extra Thoughts and Considerations

Even though Santiago didn’t work out the way we hoped, there were a few things that didn’t surprise us (thanks to a combination of previous experiences and research) that are pretty key elements of travelling to South America. Some of the points below might give you an insight into some of our decision making as our trip goes on.

• Travel time – the continent is huge, the Andes are hard to cross (if you’re going over the mountains, your bus will not be on time!).
• Spanish – there is very little English spoken, even in some touristic areas! Get practicing early, talk to yourself if you don’t have a buddy, and consume lots of audio content for listening practice!
• Spanish – the Chilean accent and vocabulary are crazy, so if you start there prepare to say ¿que? a lot. The variations in accent across countries can also throw you – the Argentinian ‘sh’ noise for a normal ‘j’ or ‘y’ was confusing as hell for us.
• Brazil – it is enormous, and they speak Portuguese, not Spanish! We think we’ll return one day, but for now it was too complicated to include – so don’t expect any Brazil advice, sorry (for now)!
• Danger – safety is not assured anywhere in the world, but we’ve always felt pretty safe in places in our travels. However South American countries tend to see more unrest than, for example, South East Asia. Be sensible, read reviews and message your accommodation in new towns, and always trust your gut. If it doesn’t feel safe to you, it’s probably not!
• Age group – we’re in our late 20s, and so are most of the people that we meet. The higher price and higher danger probably contribute to this, but it is not the same very youthful age group as South East Asia.
• Seasons – Chile and Argentina are sub tropical and so align with Southern Hemisphere seasons – Dec – Mar Summer, Jun – Aug winter. This is super important to consider if you want to visit regions of Patagonia, because it is very far south – even if you’re there in summer, you can get snow, and the shoulder seasons can be rough. The dry regions of Central South America follow the wet-dry seasons (and it’s always hot and humid in the Amazon!).
  • Bolivia & Peru dry season: April – October
  • Ecuador dry season: June – September
  • Colombia dry season: December – March, July – August

So… is it living up to expectations?

Yes yes, and yes again. Not every day is amazing, or goes the way we plan, but we’re making sure to soak up every moment. It’s taken us nearly three months to get around to working on this blog, but that just means that every post is a chance to reflect and do a little more processing, to take a moment to go ‘oh wow, that really happened’. We hope you’ll enjoying these ‘ah-ha’ moments with us. Catch you on the next one!

Keep it Short & Sweet:

Why (or why not) South America?

• The Andes – walkies, walkies walkies.
• The Amazon – jungle walkies & biodiversity
• The Prices – cheap-ish, but caters for many budget types.
• The Culture – a hospitable melting pot of Pre-Incan to post-colonial mindsets.
• The Food – gems to be found, but few and far between..

What does a year of travel look like?

• Budgeting – it doesn’t have to be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be cheap. Think locations, seasons, activities.
• Planning – can you pick a focus to help guide your travels?
• Packing – you will overdo it! Part of the process is detaching (so maybe don’t bring your favourite handmade sweater).

Where do you begin?

• Santiago de Chile – but get out of there, fast!
• For Patagonia – border hopping or down through Chile, up through Argentina.
• For the continent – Patagonia first, Colombia last (cheap to expensive); or vice versa if you can plan that well!

Extra Considerations:

• Time – the continent is huge, the Andes are hard to cross.
• Learn some Spanish – very little English is spoken!
• Danger – it’s not unsafe, but it’s not the most stable place in the world.
• Age group – more late 20s, rather than early.
• Seasons vary across every country.

If you found this post helpful and have any questions about this or any of our other blog posts, then feel free to contact us!