Hi Rowena,
I'm organising a trip for a couple of friends into the Andean foothills on the Argentinian side of the border where the weather prospects are best. The tour companies are all going to La Serena etc in Chile because there's more tourist infrastructure. If, on eclipse day, you can travel further east down the eclipse path to Vicuņa, about 65km inland, you can greatly improve your weather prospects similar to those we have in Argentina.
http://eclipsophile.com/wp-content/u.../09/Graph1.jpg
In the past, I've spent more than 8 months travelling independently around South & Central America. Fantastic place. Like anywhere, exercise caution.
Learning to speak some Spanish will help a lot. Ignore any approaches with offers that seem too good to be true. Regard anyone who flashes an ID at you and claims to be a police officer with suspicion. Police & other law enforcement officials generally don't bother the tourists except naturally at borders or airports. Steer them toward a uniformed policeman and tell them you want the uniformed policeman to check their ID. That always sends them running.
Then it all depends on your interests. So much to see. Landscapes, ancient architecture, wildlife. In Peru, Nazca Lines, Machu Picchu, Manu Biosphere Reserve, the Inca Valley around Quosco, Lake Titicaca, Floating Islands.
Don't cut your time too fine. If you're bussing from Peru to Central Chile, check timetables carefully, leave what you think is plenty of time, then double that, some parts of Peru/Chile buses on run routes every second day. In Peru, watch your belongings on the trains and buses.
I can suggest a fantastic way to get overland to La Serena Chile from Peru with fantastic views and adventure but it will take several weeks.
From Quosco, Train it down to Puno. Tour out to see the floating Islands of the Uros peoples on Lago Titicaca. They weave the islands they live on, houses, boats out of tortora reeds that they harvest from the lake shore. Continue into Bolivia and to La Paz. After La Paz Bus south to Uyuni via Potosi then take a Jewels of Bolivia tour through the high altitude lakes of the Atacama Desert. You can organise to be met at the Chilean Border in the Atacama desert and transported by Minibus through to San Pedro De Atacama. Spend a few days decompressing in San Pedro then shuttle through to Calama and fly to Santiago then on to Serena.
Personally, I prefer to do it the other way round, start with the solar eclipse so that travel delays can't cause you to miss the eclipse, then travel the other direction after the eclipse.
Because travel delays, flight delays are common, do
all your flights on one ticket, one airline. Your international luggage allocation will carry through otherwise it drops to 15kg or 20kg on domestic flights. LATAM flies from Australia to South America and has an extensive network of flights all through South America. If you miss a flight because of a flight delay, it's their problem.
For example, I've found a single airfare with LATAM that will take us SYD-BUE-Cordoba-ground travel to the eclipse-Cordoba-Rio-Iguazu Falls-Santiago-Calama-ground travel Atacama-Santiago-Isla Pasqua-SYD.
Have a great time.
Joe
