I’d been thinking about this trip for a long time. For about a year, I’ve had only two countries remaining to visit in South America, Bolivia and Ecuador. I’d always planned on doing it with American, but earlier this year when United seriously devalued miles I wanted to burn every last one. I started looking for weeks I could get away, and possible routings. Getting into La Paz and out of Quito were pretty easy, but getting between them was harder.
I could have done the easy thing and just buy it, but I had some more miles left, and United was giving me all sorts of exotic routings that would allow 23 hour connections in cities I hadn’t been to before. In the end, I decided on Medellin as it sounded the most interesting and exotic. I’ll admit, I didn’t do much research when putting this together. I had over 500,000 United miles to burn, and under a week to get things done, so I planned the in and out flights…and left the middle to chance a bit. That said, I leave in barely a week and still don’t have everything booked. It’ll all come together I suspect.
…any last minute “musts” or advice are certainly welcome.
The planned itinerary, and rough plans for this report:
Part I: Washington DC to La Paz, Bolivia on US Airways and Avianca (via Charlotte, Miami, Bogota)
Part II: La Paz, Bolivia
Part III: La Paz to Uyuni, Bolivia and the Hotel Luna Salada
Part IV: Salar de Uyuni – the Salt Flats
Part V: Uyuni to La Paz, and daytrip to Lake Titicaca
Part VI: La Paz to Medellin, Colombia on TACA Peru (via Lima)
Part VII: Short Stay in Medellin
Part VIII: Medellin to Quito, Ecuador on Aero Republica and COPA (via Panama)
Part IX: Quito, Ecuador
Part X: Quito to Washington DC on COPA and US Airways (via Panama, Cancun, and Philadelphia)
Routing:
I promise this won’t be one of those post and run trip reports….it’ll go live in just over a week with the first update! I also can’t resist sharing, as a teaser, the BIG trip I’m planning in October/November. Suiffice to say with a trip report name like “From Bula to Shalom!” I hope it will be epic…four weeks in the south pacific, a couple days in DC for laundry, and then Israel and Palestine.