How to organize a highly-complex vacation: LatAm edition.

So how do you go about planning and preparing for complex vacation on the other side of the world, with a complex route for getting there, and then a complex itinerary once in situ?…

And I don’t mean the simple “jump in a taxi, train or plane, and travel where you’re going and figure it out on the fly, whether it’s St. Pete, Sochi, Yalta, or maybe Monaco, Venice, Barcelona, Miami or LA (or wherever else, depending on where you live)”. No, not like that. What does it take to plan a more sophisticated travel itinerary?…

Now, I’m not claiming to be an expert, but here’s roughly how it works for me:

1. Pick: the places we’re going to visit; what we’re planning to see, admire, and snap; plus any extra side-dish (or totally random) activities to be partaken in.
2. Find someone to organize it all, because let’s be honest – we hardly know anything about these places besides their names. This is where the travel route gets mapped out. Usually it’s a mix of advice from those in the know, local contacts, and a travel agency (sometimes more than one).
3. Figure out how to get there and back – which isn’t always straightforward or optimal.
4. Set the budget for the whole thing. And prepare to disappoint those involved in Step 5… ->
5. Recruit a few other similarly crazy individuals (or just folks who’ve no clue what kind of hardships and misadventures await) so the trip doesn’t get too boring and lonely.

And that’s it! Then we just go…

So, where to this time? Drum roll……………………….. crash cymbal! -> to Peru and Bolivia! Hooray!

And what’s on the itinerary?…

First off, the Nazca Lines:

Then, trekking along some Inca roads:

The ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu (been; just had to return) ->

Checking out Bolivia’s infamous Death Road:

Getting lost in/on the endless Uyuni Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) ->

And contemplating-meditating, plus admiring and taking a zillion photos of the stunning high-altitude deserts in the region:

Sounds like a cool plan? Yeah, I thought so too…

What’s amusing is I’ve been planning this trip for a full… 10 years – since 2015! We were all set to go in January 2021, but then covid and its lockdowns came along and put paid to that. Instead, I ended up spending several years on… winter Arctic expeditions! And, wow, it turned out the Arctic is absolutely insane in the best way possible! Check these out: our 2021 Kolyma-Highway Expedition, our 2022 Magadan-to-Lake-Baikal Expedition, and our 2024 Yakutsk-Tiksi-Yakutsk Winter-Road Expedition.

But I digress. Now, where was I? Ah yes – a world away from the Arctic…

Getting to the less mainstream parts of Latin America has become trickier these days from Russia. It used to be a simple two-leg journey via Paris, Amsterdam, or Madrid. But alas, thanks to geopolitics, we now have to take more roundabout routes. Some go via Istanbul or the UAE, others – Cuba; we went via São Paolo…

Ooh – out the window over the Atlantic traffic was rather busy! ->

The airport we landed at in São Paolo is second only to the main one in Mexico City in terms of passenger traffic in LatAm. Here’s just a random pic in the airport (not mine, by the way) ->

Hours later – and we were approaching Lima; there’s the airport over there ->

After landing, first – a spot of city-strolling (of course!)…

But more on that in tomorrow’s post…