If we’re honest, overlanding South America was pretty easy! Certainly compared to Africa, there are very few practical issues for overlanding South America. Scroll down for a few thoughts on points we have learned along the way: vehicle prep and fuel, border crossings, and vehicle shipping in/out of the continent.

Vehicle Fuel

In Bolivia it can be hard to buy fuel with a foreign registered vehicle. We did a write-up on the problems here – see Bolivia Fuel Intelligence.  Depending on your vehicle, if you have a modern diesel engine you may have some fuel issues, particularly with high sulphur fuel at high altitude. Marcus has done some detailed write-ups on this – see fuel issues and high altitudes, fuel waxing.

In Patagonia and some of the Andes crossings, distances can be huge between fuel stations. Beware of this if you have small fuel tanks.

Borders

For Brits at least, borders are very easy, particularly if you speak a little Spanish. No visas are required for any country and no problems at any borders. Obviously you’ll have to check out the requirements for your nationality, but a few minor points for all nationalities to note:

Chile is very strict on their ‘no fruit, veg, raw meat’ rule, so make sure you don’t stock up on these before you try to cross – they will all be confiscated.

Brazil can be a bit funny with food at some borders, but it doesn’t seem to be widely enforced (see our palaver of leaving all our food at a hotel when we crossed from Bolivia at the San Matias border). We suspect that this is because San Matias is a well-known drugs-running border and we haven’t heard to problems at any other entry points.

Bolivia doesn’t seem to care about food except when entering from Chile on the main Iquique/Oruro road, where they took our potatoes!

French Guiana insurance on arrival is hard to get for EU registered vehicles; they seem to think you should have an EU Green Card. You have to persuade them to let you enter and go to Cayenne to buy insurance from CA2P (see our story at French Guiana… Bonjour!).

Suriname most nationalities need to get a tourist card before entering. This can be obtained at the Consulate in Cayenne (French Guiana) or Georgetown (Guyana).

Shipping in and out of South America

Into South America – We shipped into South America from Hamburg in Germany to Montevideo to Uruguay and we sailed on the cargo ship for 5 weeks with Cuthbert. Check it out with the links.

Out of South America – We shipped out of South America around the Darien Gap, from Cartagena in Colombia to Colon in Panama. We used agent IVSSUK to arrange it.

Vehicle Preparation for South America

After a year in Africa and some time to research and consider the potential problems for overlanding South America, we decided to do a bit of additional vehicle prep before shipping to Montevideo. It’s mostly geeky-stuff specifically relevant to the Iveco Daily 4×4, but click here to see what we did.

Update April 2018: After 2.5 years in South America and with the benefit of hind-sight having done 4 months in the Amazon’s rainy season in 2017, we did a bit more preparation in 2018 for the impending heat and humidity of the Central American rainy season. Click here for details of the new super-roof-fan and the new lithium leisure battery system… Bring on the rains! 🙂

Route Planning for South America

It’s a huge continent with no obviously convenient route that takes in all the main attractions. We ended up zig-zagging around the continent to cover everything that we wanted to see (see our route map).  Sadly the inaccessibility of Venezuela (particularly the closure to vehicles of the border between Colombia and Venezuela)  means that a circuit loop of the continent isn’t possible at the moment. Many overlanders, in fact the vast majority, do a very standard route: southbound from Colombia to Argentina (sail into Cartagena, down the Andean west side to Ushuaia, then up the east coast to Buenos Aires to ship-out) or the opposite route northbound.

If you limit your trip to the ‘standard’ route described above you miss over half of the continent. Look at a map. This ‘PanAm corridor’ misses seven of the continent’s 13 countries. It’s hard to say that you are ‘doing’ South America whilst setting foot in less than half of the countries. More importantly, the PanAm highway route doesn’t even touch the largest, most diverse and most fabulously colourful country on the continent. OK… admittedly it’s quite a commitment and a slog to make it all the way up to the Guyanas. But we beg you to pleeeeease at least consider the epic Brazil… it deserves at least a teeny smidgeon of your adventure time. It’s a South America utterly at odds with the PanAm corridor. Don’t take our word for it… check it out for yourself  Click here for our Top 10 Reasons to go beyond the PanAm Corridor and head east a bit.

Overlanding costs: The Americas -v- Africa

Arriving in The Americas after overlanding Africa gave us a very different spending profile. Click here for details on costs and comparisons.

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