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Choosing to travel alone to another continent, especially for months at a time, is a big decision. Of course there’s uncertainty around it. There’s simply no way to know exactly what will happen once you get there, who you’ll meet, or what the experience will feel like until you actually do it.
But if you really want to experience it, I think that already tells you something important.
I was in that position when I started traveling solo. At the time, I didn’t personally know anyone else who traveled this way. Once I was on the road, I met plenty of people doing exactly the same thing.
Still, seeing how many people travel this way doesn’t make solo travel the right choice for everyone.
Is solo travel for you?
I don’t think this is really about making a pros and cons list. It’s more about the kind of experience you want to have.
Traveling solo gives you complete control over your time. You can go at your own pace, change your plans, stay longer when you love a place, leave earlier when you don’t, or have a day when you do absolutely nothing without having to negotiate any of it with someone else.
For me, that freedom is a huge part of the appeal. I don’t travel to move through a checklist of places I’m supposed to see. I like having enough time to enjoy the journey, see how I feel about a place once I’m actually there, and give myself the chance to connect with it.
That’s the perspective I’m writing this article from. I’m a slow traveler, and if what you want is a perfectly planned itinerary that gets you through as many places as possible in the time you have, my approach probably won’t make much sense to you.
But if the idea of having that freedom sounds exciting rather than stressful, that’s a pretty good sign that solo travel might suit you.
Will I feel lonely traveling solo?
You might. Traveling solo doesn’t somehow make loneliness disappear.
But personally, loneliness hasn’t been a constant part of my experience at all. If anything, I tend to socialize and meet more people when I travel alone than when I travel with someone. When you’re traveling with another person, it’s very easy to stay within that relationship. When you’re on your own, you naturally end up being more open to the people around you.
That doesn’t mean meeting people requires constantly putting yourself in highly social situations, hanging out in big groups, or going out every night. Most conversations start through small, everyday interactions, and you don’t need to be an extrovert — or at least, you don’t need to act like one every night — to connect with people while you travel.
Slow travel also gives you room to choose the kind of environment that fits your energy. This is something I’m still learning to manage myself. There are periods when I’m more focused on work or simply don’t feel like socializing as much, and I can choose quieter places. Then, when I start craving more movement and people again, I can move somewhere more touristy or to a bigger city where I know I’ll have more opportunities to find that.
Sometimes I choose smaller destinations where I know my interactions are likely to be quieter and more relaxed. Other times I want a bigger city or somewhere with more of a social scene. I like being able to move between those experiences depending on what I feel like at the time.
Solo travelers don’t necessarily love being alone all the time, and being able to enjoy your own company doesn’t mean you’ll never feel lonely. Sometimes you’ll wish you had someone to have dinner with, or to make plans with, and there simply won’t be anyone around. That’s different from needing company to enjoy your trip. You can be open to meeting people without depending on meeting people constantly.
Something happens to relationships when you travel
When you do meet people while traveling, relationships can feel different from the ones you build in everyday life.
Something I’ve noticed is that people who struggle to socialize, make friends, or find people they really connect with back home can sometimes find those connections much more easily while traveling. It’s not necessarily because travelers are more social. There’s a stereotype of the solo traveler, and sure, you’ll meet the classic backpacker with hippy vibes. But there really isn’t one type of slow traveler.
Maybe part of it is simply that the people you meet on the road have already made at least one choice similar to yours. You don’t necessarily have the same personality, age, background, or interests, but there can be something familiar in the way you look for joy, experience new things, or approach relationships with other people. That shared ground can make it easier to connect with people you might never have crossed paths with in your everyday life.
Relationships on the road can work differently, and I think that’s one of the things that’s difficult to imagine before you actually start traveling this way.
How much should I plan before I leave?
There’s a balance between having enough planned to feel comfortable and leaving enough open to actually take advantage of the flexibility solo travel gives you.
Planning ahead can save you money, make logistics easier, and reduce some of the uncertainty that comes with traveling somewhere for the first time. But planning doesn’t necessarily mean booking. You can research possible routes, understand how much things cost, know your transportation options, and have a general idea of where you want to go without committing to every stop before you leave.
That distinction matters because some decisions are simply easier to make once you’re there. You might hear about a place you hadn’t considered, discover a better way to get somewhere, or realize that a destination you expected to love isn’t somewhere you want to spend much time after all. Leaving some space in your itinerary means you can make those decisions with information you didn’t have when you were planning from home.
This is particularly useful in Latin America, where not everything you’ll need to know is always well documented online. I’ll get into that more when we talk about transportation and logistics, but sometimes the best information only becomes available once you’re on the ground.
How much uncertainty you’re comfortable with also changes with experience. When I first started traveling, having more things figured out in advance made me feel more secure. But plans don’t always match what happens once you’re there. After dealing with enough changes, unexpected situations, and things that simply worked differently from what I had imagined, I became much more confident that I could figure things out as I went.
The same happens as you spend more time in a region. Every country in Latin America is different, but you’re not starting from zero every time you cross a border. You gradually learn what to ask, where to look for information, what is worth confirming in person, and which decisions can safely wait until later.
That doesn’t mean traveling without a plan. It means not using planning only as a way to eliminate uncertainty. The goal is to know which decisions are better made before you leave and which ones you’ll be better equipped to make once you’re there.
What should I research before I leave?
Planning a trip can be stressful, but it can also be part of the fun. I love looking at the places I might visit, checking out accommodation, seeing what there is to do, and even thinking about where I might want to eat. Imagining what your days could look like is part of planning a trip — and none of it means you have to commit to those plans.
But there are some less exciting things you really do need to look into before you leave:
- Entry requirements: Check whether you need a visa or any other permits, how long you’re allowed to stay as a tourist, and what the conditions for entering and leaving the country are. What you find online and what happens at the border won’t always match perfectly, so don’t build your entire itinerary around assuming you’ll automatically be granted the maximum possible stay. But you should absolutely know the rules before you arrive.
- Weather and what to pack: Look at the conditions you can expect in the places you’re visiting at that particular time of year, not just the country’s climate in general. Latin America covers an enormous range of climates and altitudes, and what you need can change significantly as you move around.
- Things you personally rely on: Think about the things that are easy to find at home but might be less common where you’re going. I’m Argentine, and mate is part of my everyday life. The farther north I travel in Latin America, the harder it can be to find the yerba I drink. It’s usually not impossible, but I tend to carry a small reserve with me. Your version of that might be something completely different — the point is to think about your own routines rather than following a generic packing list.
- Money, connectivity, and health basics: Know how you’ll access money, how you’ll get connected when you arrive, and what you need in terms of travel insurance or any health-related entry requirements. We’ll get into all of these in more detail in the logistics section.
So, what do I book beforehand?
This is roughly how I handle it:
- Long-distance flights: If I know I’ll need a particular flight, I usually book it in advance because prices are sensitive to timing. If I’m booking far ahead, I generally choose a flexible fare so I’m not completely locked into that date.
- The first few nights: I usually book two or three nights of accommodation before I arrive. I personally stay in hostels, which tend to have enough availability that I can extend if I like the place. That gives me somewhere to go when I arrive without committing to how long I’ll stay before I’ve even seen it.
- Buses, transfers, and tours: I research the options and prices beforehand, but I generally don’t book them. Prices usually don’t change much depending on how far ahead you buy, and in my experience, booking in person can often be cheaper. These are the kinds of decisions where keeping some flexibility makes sense.
Is Latin America a good place for a first solo trip?
Definitely. Latin America is a huge and incredibly diverse region, with its beautiful sides, its contradictions, and things that will make traveling easier or more challenging. Depending on the kind of trip you want to have, it can also be relatively affordable, particularly if you’re coming from the Global North.
But more importantly, there’s no such thing as a beginner level of solo travel that you need to complete before coming to Latin America.
If this is your first time traveling alone, you might feel more comfortable starting somewhere with well-established international tourism. Those destinations tend to have more tourist infrastructure, more information available, people who speak English, and generally fewer things you’ll have to figure out from scratch while you’re still learning what traveling solo looks like for you.
Cultures vary enormously from one country to another, and adapting to a new place can still take some time. But in my experience, Latin America is generally very welcoming to foreign travelers. I’ve rarely felt that being a foreigner itself created friction with the people around me. Quite the opposite: when I’ve been confused, needed directions, or simply didn’t understand how something worked, I’ve generally found people willing to help.
You don’t need to choose the country that someone has decided is the “easiest” for first-time travelers. A quick search will give you a good idea of which destinations have a more established tourist circuit in any country you’re interested in.
So I wouldn’t start by asking which country in Latin America is best for beginners. Start by asking where you actually want to go. Latin America has something for almost every kind of traveler. The next step is figuring out what kind of experience you want to have and which part of this enormous region can give you that.
How should I build my Latin America itinerary?
Most people come to Latin America with a few highlights already in mind — places they’ve always wanted to see or experiences they don’t want to miss. Those are a great starting point for building an itinerary, but don’t assume they’re all there is to experience along the way.
One of the advantages of giving yourself more time in each place is that you start discovering things you didn’t know about when you planned the trip. A city you initially thought of as a stop on the way somewhere else might have enough to keep you interested for days. And sometimes the places that end up being the most memorable aren’t the ones that originally brought you there.
Ecuador is a good example. You might travel there specifically to visit the Galápagos and initially think of Quito as little more than a necessary stop along the way. But give yourself some time and suddenly there’s much more: exploring Quito’s historic center, trying local food, visiting coffee or chocolate producers, going birdwatching in Mindo, soaking in hot springs, or climbing a volcano. Very few places in Latin America need to be just a technical stop.
Think in regions, not just destinations
Instead of connecting a list of isolated highlights, look at what you can discover around the places that already interest you. You don’t necessarily need to see an entire country, and you don’t need to limit yourself to one country either. Think about regions you want to explore rather than destinations you need to check off.
That gives you more room to discover places along the way, while also making the distances you travel more manageable. Latin America is enormous, and moving constantly between far-apart destinations can take a surprising amount of both time and money.
Build a trip you can actually sustain
If you’re planning a long trip, your itinerary also needs to be sustainable for you. Traveling for months isn’t the same as taking a two-week vacation with a list of things you want to fit in before you go home.
You probably won’t want to spend every day moving, taking tours, visiting attractions, or waking up early for the next activity. That pace gets expensive, but it also gets exhausting. A long trip needs room for slower days.
That might mean walking around a neighborhood with no particular plan, spending an afternoon in a plaza, going to a market, having a coffee, or simply doing some of the ordinary things you do when you’re not traveling. And yes, sometimes it might mean staying in and watching Netflix.
A slower day isn’t a wasted travel day. Giving yourself enough time and space to enjoy the trip without exhausting your energy or your budget is part of what makes long-term travel sustainable in the first place.
What is traveling around Latin America actually like?
Latin America is a huge and diverse region, so there’s no single answer to what traveling around it looks like. Things work differently from country to country, and sometimes even from one part of the same country to another. But there are a few things that are useful to understand when you start planning a longer trip around the region.
Distances don’t always work the way they look on a map
Distances in Latin America are enormous, but kilometers alone don’t always tell you how easy it will be to get from one place to another.
Some long distances are surprisingly easy to cover because there’s a good direct connection. Other places might look like an obvious next stop on a map and turn out to require a much longer journey than you expected. The geography, the condition of the roads, border crossings, and the connections that actually exist can all change what a logical route looks like in practice.
That can be frustrating when you’re planning from home, but it doesn’t mean getting around is impossible. Millions of people move around this region every day, and there’s also a well-established tourist circuit. Sometimes you just need to adjust the route you originally imagined once you understand how people move between those places.
Get comfortable with long-distance buses
If you’re not used to spending long hours on buses, there’s a good chance Latin America will change that.
Long-distance buses are one of the main ways people move around the region. They’re not simply the budget alternative to flying. In many places, they’re the transportation system that makes the most sense for the geography and the way cities and towns are connected.
The experience can also be very different from what you associate with bus travel at home. Depending on the country, route, and company, long-distance buses can be remarkably comfortable, with reclining seats designed for overnight journeys and different service classes.
I have a whole guide on long-distance buses in Latin America where I explain how they work, what the different classes mean, where to buy tickets, what to expect from schedules, and how border crossings work.
Not everything you need will be easy to find online
This is one of the things that can make planning a trip around Latin America frustrating from abroad. Sometimes you know a connection must exist but can’t find a clear schedule online. You might struggle to figure out how people pay for something, find conflicting information about prices, or discover that the website you found doesn’t accept your foreign card.
Not finding something online doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t exist.
Some practical information is simply easier to get once you’re there. You might need to ask at a terminal, confirm something locally, or find out that there’s a much easier option than the one you were trying to organize from home.
That’s also why I wouldn’t try to solve every logistical question months in advance. Do enough research to understand your options and know what you need to pay attention to, but expect some things to become clearer once you’re there.
I’ve covered several of these practical questions separately, including the apps and resources I use around Latin America, how money, cards, and ATMs work for travelers and a guide on health care and travel insurance. If you’re trying to understand the logistics before you leave, those guides are a good place to start.
Is traveling in Latin America dangerous?
I know what you’re probably thinking. Start researching a trip to Latin America and it doesn’t take long before you come across news about violence, political unrest, economic crises, protests, or another situation that makes you wonder whether coming here is a terrible idea.
I’m not going to tell you those risks don’t exist. They do. But I do think it’s important to put them into perspective.
Being a tourist in a country is not the same as experiencing the realities of living there. Unfortunately, social and economic crises are a recurring part of life in many parts of Latin America, and they can absolutely affect your trip. But they don’t always affect it in the way you might imagine when you’re reading the news from another country.
Start with the usual precautions
The basic precautions you would take anywhere still apply. Pay attention to where you’re going, especially at night. Don’t leave your phone or belongings unnecessarily exposed. Ask locally if there are areas you should avoid.
It’s also worth being careful with tourist services. Check prices before agreeing to something and, whenever possible, use established agencies or official providers rather than accepting the first offer you get on the street. Scams and inflated tourist prices happen, and a little research goes a long way.
But those everyday risks are different from another question travelers often have: what happens when the country itself seems to be going through a crisis?
A crisis can disrupt your trip without necessarily putting you in danger
I’m writing this from Puno, Peru, while getting ready to cross into Bolivia. And if you look at the current situation there, it’s easy to understand why someone planning a trip from abroad might reconsider going altogether.
Bolivia is dealing with serious economic and political instability, including fuel shortages, rising costs, protests, and roadblocks. Those are real problems, and I’m certainly not suggesting travelers should ignore them.
But growing up in Latin America probably gives me a slightly different perspective on what those headlines mean. Political or economic instability doesn’t automatically translate into personal danger everywhere in the country.
What it can mean for a traveler is disruption.
A road might be blocked and the bus you planned to take can’t leave. Fuel shortages can affect transportation. Prices can change unexpectedly. An airport can close or a journey that should have taken one day might suddenly take two. You may have to change your route entirely.
Those things can be frustrating and they can cost you money. But logistical risk, financial risk, and personal safety risk aren’t necessarily the same thing.
That distinction also changes how I make decisions about traveling. If I had a two-week vacation in Bolivia with flights, hotels, and activities already booked for specific dates, I would seriously consider changing that trip right now. There would simply be too many opportunities for disruption.
But traveling slowly gives me a flexibility that not everyone has. If I can’t get to one place, I can change my route. If I need to stay somewhere an extra day, I can. I can ask people on the ground what the situation is like and make decisions as I go.
What you see on the news and what you experience can be very different
I experienced another version of this while I was in Quito, Ecuador. There were strong protests related to political unrest, and a 15-day curfew was introduced from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Of course, that affected my trip. I couldn’t be out during those hours, and sometimes a situation like that simply means changing your plans and spending the night at the hostel. It’s inconvenient.
At the same time, people back home who knew I was in Ecuador were worried about me because what they were seeing in the news looked extremely dangerous. And those situations can be dangerous if you’re caught in the middle of a violent protest.
But that wasn’t what my everyday experience in Quito looked like. I was staying in the historic center, just a couple of blocks from the seat of government, and I never personally encountered one of those demonstrations or experienced violence in the streets.
I wasn’t following the political situation closely enough to pretend I fully understood the complex social issues behind those protests, either. And that distinction matters. My relatively uneventful experience as a tourist doesn’t mean the crisis wasn’t serious or that local people weren’t being affected by it.
Being a traveler can sometimes keep you in a kind of bubble. What makes international news and what you personally experience while staying in a tourist area can be dramatically different things.
So when you see worrying news about a country you’re planning to visit, don’t ignore it — but don’t reduce the entire country to the headline either. Find out where the problem is happening, what kind of risk it creates, and how it could realistically affect your trip.
Sometimes the answer will be that you shouldn’t go. Other times, it may simply mean changing your route, allowing more time, spending a little more than expected, or being patient when things don’t work according to plan.
What about solo travel as a woman?
If you’re a woman planning your first solo trip to Latin America, I know safety probably comes with an extra layer of concern. But I also think the way we talk about solo female travel tends to exaggerate that difference.
Women already navigate certain risks differently in everyday life. We tell friends where we’re going, meet strangers in public places, pay attention when walking alone at night, and deal with unwanted attention. Traveling doesn’t suddenly create all of those risks — it changes the context in which we manage them.
That said, Latin America does have its own cultural context. Machismo is very present in many parts of the region, and traveling alone as a woman can sometimes make you stand out in ways you might not be used to.
In my experience, there are still plenty of assumptions around the idea of a woman traveling by herself. I’m constantly asked who I’m traveling with, whether I’m really alone, or if I’m not afraid. I’ve also dealt with catcalling, sexist comments, and men who simply wouldn’t take the hint and leave me alone.
I don’t automatically interpret those experiences as signs that I’m in danger. Most of the time, I experience them as part of navigating a cultural context where ideas about women, independence, and how men interact with women can be different from what you’re used to. That doesn’t mean ignoring a situation that feels unsafe or pretending harassment is harmless. It means distinguishing between something being uncomfortable, sexist, or culturally unfamiliar and something actually presenting a threat.
As for the practical side of staying safe, most of what I do is remarkably ordinary: I pay attention to where I stay and how I’ll get there, make sure I have connectivity and backup payment methods, share my plans when it makes sense, and try not to make important decisions when I’m exhausted. I go much deeper into those practical decisions in Is it safe to travel alone as a woman in Latin America?.
But there’s another side of this conversation that I think gets ignored. Women traveling alone aren’t an unusual exception in Latin America. I meet them constantly. Most aren’t here to prove how brave they are or overcome some enormous fear. They wanted to travel, so they came.
And that matters, because if every conversation about solo female travel begins and ends with danger, we miss most of what the experience is actually about: freedom, independence, meeting people, discovering places, and having complete control over your own time.
That’s something I explore more in What solo female travel is really about (and what gets ignored).
So yes, being a woman can add some considerations to traveling alone. Take them seriously. But don’t let safety become the entire story of your trip before you’ve even started it.
How much money do I need to travel around Latin America?
Latin America can absolutely be an affordable place to travel, particularly if you’re coming from countries with higher salaries and costs of living. But “Latin America is cheap” is only useful up to a point.
There are enormous differences in cost between countries, and you’ll find plenty of rankings telling you which ones are the cheapest for travelers. Those comparisons can give you a useful general idea, but they don’t mean that everything you buy or do will follow the same pattern.
When I travel north from countries like Argentina or Chile into places like Colombia, for example, I definitely notice the difference in my overall spending. Many everyday things become considerably cheaper. But every country has a different economy, produces different things locally, imports others, and has its own patterns of consumption. What’s cheap for locals to eat, buy, or do isn’t necessarily what you were planning to spend your money on.
Food makes this particularly obvious. In Peru, I can eat incredible local dishes — ceviche, potatoes prepared in more ways than I knew existed, or a full menú del día — for very little money. But order something that doesn’t fit the local eating habits as closely and the equation can change surprisingly quickly. A basic tomato and lettuce salad can cost more than I’d expect in Argentina. And if you want a decent bottle of wine with your lomo saltado, suddenly Peru doesn’t feel quite so cheap anymore.
The same applies to travel experiences. Latin America has plenty of inexpensive activities, but it also has experiences priced for international tourism and luxury travel. A ski trip in Argentina, for example, can cost surprisingly close to what you might spend skiing in the Alps. Tours, outdoor activities, clothing, handicrafts, electronics, and imported goods all follow their own price logic.
So instead of asking “How cheap is this country?”, I think the more useful question is “How much will the kind of trip I want to have cost me there?”
That number is harder to calculate, especially when you’re planning a long trip with a lot of flexibility. You don’t know exactly where you’ll go, how long you’ll stay, which experiences you’ll discover along the way, or how your spending habits might change once you’re there.
I have a method I use to build a realistic monthly estimate before traveling somewhere I haven’t been yet. It’s not about predicting every expense perfectly, but about creating a working number based on accommodation, transportation, food, activities, and enough margin for everything you can’t predict. I explain the whole process in Estimating a realistic budget for long-term travel in Latin America.
Your budget doesn’t need to predict the trip. It needs to make the trip sustainable.
Do I need to speak Spanish to travel around Latin America?
No. You don’t need to speak Spanish to travel around Latin America.
Especially in destinations with established international tourism, you can usually figure out the logistics without much trouble. You’ll find people who speak English, tours offered in English, accommodation used to receiving foreign travelers, and translation apps for everything else. Even with very little Spanish, you’ll quickly pick up enough words to order food, buy a bus ticket, ask how much something costs, and get through most everyday interactions.
And if you’re traveling solo, not speaking Spanish doesn’t mean you’ll be isolated either. You’ll meet plenty of other travelers you can communicate with.
But connecting with other travelers isn’t the same as connecting with the place.
That difference becomes much more noticeable when you travel slowly. If you spend a few days somewhere, functional Spanish might be all you need. Stay for a few weeks or months and eventually you start wanting to understand more than the menu and the bus schedule.
You want to know what the people at the table next to you are talking about. You want to understand the joke someone just made. You want to ask a question and actually follow where the answer leads. You start recognizing the same people in your neighborhood, going back to the same café or market, and having interactions that could become conversations if you shared enough of a language.
You can travel through Latin America without Spanish. But Spanish gives you access to a part of Latin America that is very difficult to experience without it.
I wrote much more about this distinction in Do you need to learn Spanish before traveling to Latin America?. And the good news is that you don’t need to postpone your trip until you’ve learned the language. If you’re going to spend weeks or months in the region anyway, traveling can become part of how you learn it.
That’s also why I created my Spanish for digital nomads and slow travelers program. It’s one-on-one Spanish built around the situations that actually become part of life when you stay somewhere longer — from ordering food and getting around at the beginning to dealing with accommodation, money, healthcare, paperwork, and eventually having the conversations that let you go beyond simply navigating the place.
You don’t need Spanish to start the trip. But if connection is one of the reasons you’re traveling slowly in the first place, learning it can completely change how much of the place becomes available to you.
Ready to start planning your trip?
If you came to this article excited about traveling solo in Latin America but unsure where to start, I hope I’ve answered at least some of the questions that tend to make a first trip here feel more complicated than it actually is.
And if you’re already planning one but still wondering whether what you have in mind makes sense: it probably isn’t as crazy as it feels.
You can spend hours researching destinations, reading forums, comparing other people’s itineraries, and asking AI increasingly specific questions. All of those things are useful. But sometimes there’s a point where another search isn’t what you need. You just need to talk through your trip with someone who knows the region and has traveled this way before.
That’s part of what I do through my Plan your trip to Latin America service.
That can be something very concrete: checking whether your itinerary makes sense, understanding how realistic a particular route is, talking through safety concerns traveling alone, figuring out transportation, or getting some context around a cultural difference or local situation you’re unsure about.
Or we can start much earlier in the process and work out what kind of trip you actually want to have, which places fit your interests, how long it makes sense to stay, and how to build a route around your time, budget, and priorities.
You don’t need someone else to plan your trip for you. Sometimes you just need enough context to feel confident making your own decisions.
If that’s where you are right now, you can take a look at the different ways I can help you plan your trip to Latin America.