Expert: Juan Carlos Valencia - 8/5/2008

Question
juan carlos,

do you know of any bus companies throughout south america. i'm particularly interested in latitudinal travel down the western coast. are there any bus/transportation companies that do inter-country routes? the idea is of two, possibly more, males traveling together. we are confident in our trekking abilities. thanks for the help.

ben
northern california

Answer
Hey Ben,

regulations make it difficult for large multinational transport companies to run operations in south america. So I would say that there are not companies that run buses from Colombia to Chile.

YouŽll have to rely on national and even regional routes along the way, but then, as the distances involved are so long, you will have to make frequent stops.

In Colombia, if you arrive to Cartagena, a first destination would be Bucaramanga (east route) or Medellin (west route), from there, Bogota (east route) or Cali (west route). An then both routes convergegoing to Ecuador along the panamerican highway, which is like the south american route 66.

Bus travel is fairly cheap and mostly safe, but do it in daytime will crossing Colombia.

Tell me more about your route and I may be able to suggest interesting stopovers.

Saludos

JC