Tips for South America

Got sent a doco of tips typed up nicely by my mate Liz Kesang. She spent 4 months in South America last year. Thanks Liz! :)

Useful things to take

- Buy a couple of mini Purell hand sanitisers from the supermarket

- A money belt to wear under your clothes

- Suncream from home if you’ve got room, it’s expensive to buy over there

- Clothes that are ok to go in dryers as all the laundromats use them and in some places your stuff never dries

- Zip-off trousers as they’re good for saving space in your pack and really useful for when you’re out and about during the day

- Take lightweight clothes that you can take on and off in layers. Jeans and big fleeces are bulky and cost more to get washed (see below).

- Thermals (long and short sleeved tops and long bottoms).. some places are freezing

- Water purifying tablets to save money on bottled water. You can put them in a litre of tap water and drink the water a couple of hours later.

- Camping clothesline for if you want to do handwashing and there’s no laundromat

- A calculator for working out exchange rates and showing people prices you want to pay if you can’t remember how to say it in Spanish

- Small locks for your pack and day bag. You can get cheap ones in packs of 3 from the $2 shop.

- If going to high altitude places, Gingko Biloba tablets. Enough for 200mg a day when you’ll be at high altitude (look up “altitude sickness” on the Internet).

- Travel diary as it’s good to read later and to keep track of where you’ve been and what you’ve seen. Also write in it your friends’ addresses (for postcards), important contact details (next of kin, your GP, bank, travel insurance company, etc) and write when you’ve taken money out of your account/credit card and how much, to keep track of how much you’ve got left.

- Lonely Planet’s Latin American Spanish phrasebook. Extremely useful. Especially in restaurants where you have no idea what most of the stuff on the menu is.

When you’re there

- Try empanadas when you’re in Argentina, they’re like Cornish pasties and really yummy, especially from the “Solo Empanada” chain

- Try “cuy” when you’re in Peru (guinea pig). You can get quarter, half or whole cooked guinea pigs.

- There are lots of Internet cafes around in South America, even in the small towns

- Don’t flash your camera around in cities.. take it out discreetly and put it away again quickly. If you’re going to be in a high crime area (eg carnival), take a disposable camera instead.

- Lock your pack when you’re not around. You might also want to lock your day bag when walking around crowded places.

- When shopping, check the expiry dates of stuff, some of the stuff shops sell are expired

- Buy camera film from proper looking places, like actual Kodak shops as opposed to street markets

- Don’t buy meat that’s sitting at room temperature or pastries with meat in them from dodgy looking bakeries (better to be safe than throwing up all night!)

- Before you take your washing to the laundromat, make a list of the clothes you’re giving them. Check your washing after you get it back while you’re still at the laundromat in case they’ve lost stuff (happens quite a lot). Laundromats usually charge by the kilo.. a supermarket-sized bag of laundry is about a kilo. If you’ve got jeans or big fleece type things you’ll probably end up with 2 or 3 kilos. There are hardly any laundromats around where you wash your own clothes, practically all of them do service washes where they do it for you.

- Put toilet paper in the bin, not down the toilet (their sewage systems can’t handle it)

- Always carry a roll of toilet paper - heaps of times there won’t be any. Some toilet attendants charge extra for toilet paper and they’ll only give you about 8 squares unless you ask for more (then you’ll feel stink if you’ve got the runs). In some countries you’ll find it hard to find a toilet that doesn’t charge fees (eg Bolivia and Peru). Gas stations almost always have a toilet you can use (but in the toilet-charging countries they’ll usually charge too).

- Use common sense when out after dark (don’t go down deserted dark streets on your own, take a taxi if you feel unsafe, etc)

- Keep valuables in hotel safes if they have one, like your passport, tickets, credit cards, travellers cheques etc and just carry around what money you’ll need for the day/night. Just in case you’re unlucky and get mugged or something (I didn’t).

- If you’re travelling on public buses, keep your valuables on you and not in your pack as sometimes packs get stolen from the luggage compartment (this happened to a couple I know in Colombia).

- You can either change money at “Casa de Cambio”s (independent money changers – they’re all over the place) or banks. I used Casa de Cambios as they had better rates and there were huge queues at the banks all the time. Use your own calculator to work it out and count the money they give you. Don’t change money from people on the street, especially at borders - you can always find a better rate at a Casa de Cambio and there’s less risk of getting ripped off. I got ripped off by a guy on the street at a border who rigged his calculator to use the memory recall key instead of the equals key (the label on the button had been rubbed away) and I ended up losing about $25 US.

- In Bolivia and Peru, you can only pay for some of the tourist activities in US dollars, so carry US dollars as well as the local currency. Ecuador uses the US dollar as their local currency. Check for counterfeit US dollars when getting them in South America if you know what to look out for, there’s quite a few floating around. You can’t get US dollars from ATMs or money change places in Brazil, only Brazilian reais.

- Tip waiters and local tour guides, it’s expected at the end (10-12%)

- If you want to take someone’s photo, especially in poor countries, give them some money for it (about 50c NZ)

- Always carry small change.. heaps of shops, stalls, buses, etc won’t change big notes. Change some money into small notes and coins whenever you can so you’ll always have small change.

- The cheapest country is Bolivia, then Peru, then Ecuador (out of Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Chile). Buy handicrafts in Bolivia as they’ll be the cheapest. But try to buy stuff at the end of your trip so you can take it home with you. It’s expensive and not always reliable to post stuff home. The post offices have big queues most of the time and lots of them have those systems where you take a ticket and wait for the number to come up before getting to see a clerk. Then you might find out you’ve been in the wrong queue for the past half hour and have to go through the whole thing again for a different counter to get the overseas envelope you need. Then once you have the envelope you have to get another ticket and queue again for the counter you were at to start with. And you have to do all this in Spanish.

- Once you start haggling for something they expect you to buy it. You can’t haggle in established shops, only generally markets. In Chile and Argentina they don’t seem to haggle (it’s all shops anyway).

- At high altitude:

1. Take 200mg of Gingko Biloba a day starting a couple of days before, and during the whole time you’re at high altitude.

2. Drink 2 litres of water a day. Because the air has less oxygen, it can’t hold very much moisture so every time you breathe out you’re losing water from your body and it’s not being replaced by water from the air so you need to drink lots to get the water you need or you’ll constantly have a dehydration headache which really sucks.

3. Don’t run and jump around, especially when you first get to high altitude. Move in slow motion when hiking. If you try to go at normal speed you’ll be gasping for breath and have headspins and get headaches and have to keep stopping every couple of minutes. Slow and steady is the way to hike.

4. You might have trouble sleeping and wake up every couple of hours gasping for breath. Some people experience this the whole time they’re at high altitude.

5. Don’t drink alcohol, it makes it harder for your body to adjust to high altitude and you’re more likely to have the problems above.

Price guides

Brazil:

Airport bus from Rio airport to the city centre - $6 reais ($4.27 NZ)

Gatorade - $3.80 reais ($2.70 NZ)

Dinner at a pay-per-plate-weight restaurant - $9.50 reais ($6.75 NZ)

Statue of Christ train and entry - $36 reais ($25.60 NZ)

Bus fare - $1.90 reais ($1.35 NZ)

Argentina:

Dorm bed in a 4-bed hostel room in Ushuaia for 4 nights - $80 Arg pesos ($39.28 NZ)

Dorm bed in a 4-bed HI hostel room in Salta for 3 nights - $45 Arg pesos ($22.10 NZ)

4 empanadas and a fruit salad - $10.20 Arg pesos ($5 NZ)

5 rolls of 36 exp camera film - $60 Arg pesos ($29.46 NZ)

Laundry, 1kg - $6 Arg pesos ($2.95 NZ)

Chile:

Packaged luncheon meat slices from supermarket - $345 Ch pesos (98c NZ)

Banana from a fruit shop - $180 Ch pesos (51c NZ)

Gelato icecream - $670 Ch pesos ($1.91 NZ)

Burger and coffee at TGI Friday’s restaurant - $3700 Ch pesos ($10.55 NZ)

Museum entry fee in San Pedro - $2000 Ch pesos ($5.70 NZ)

Bolivia:

Pizza at a restaurant - $25 Bols ($4.74 NZ)

Tip for local guides for a 2-day Uyuni salt flats tour - $30 Bols ($5.69 NZ)

Donut at a bakery - $2 Bols (38c NZ)

Coca museum entry fee in La Paz - $8 Bols ($1.52 NZ)

Death Road mountain biking day-trip - $45 US ($68.52 NZ)

Peru:

Tip for taking a local’s photo - $1 Sol (47c NZ)

Cinnamon bun and donut at a bakery - $1.50 Sols (70c NZ)

5 rolls of 36 exp camera film - $50 Sols ($23.38 NZ)

Empanada - $1 Sol (47c NZ)

McDonalds hamburger - $3 Sols ($1.40 NZ)

Ecuador (US$):

2x KFC snack burgers - $2.50 US ($3.81 NZ)

Dinner at an all-you-can-eat-and-drink Mongolian BBQ restaurant - $12 US ($18.27 NZ)

Tip for baggage porter at hotel – 50c US (76c NZ)

Twin room in a 3 star-ish hotel in Quito for 1 night - $16.50 US ($25.13 NZ)

Haircut (womens’ wash, cut and blow-dry) - $3 US ($4.57 NZ)

Quick way to work out rough exchange rates into NZ$:

Brazilian reais – divide the amount by 1.4

Argentinian pesos – divide the amount by 2

Chilean pesos - 500 Ch pesos is about $1US

Bolivian Bolivianos – divide the amount by 5

Peruvian Sols – divide the amount by 2

US$ - multiply the amount by 1.5