Hi everyone,

My fiance and I are planning a trip to South America (specifically northern Chile, Bolivia, southern Peru, northern Argentina, and Uruguay) later this year. We have been looking into getting a hostel card each as we plan so spend about half of our time in hostels and the rest in cheap hotels. Which hostel card would be the most useful to have in South America?

Also we are planning to spend 3 months traveling through these regions, is this enough time? Any recommendations on what we must see while we are there too? Apart from our first couple of night's stay in Santiago we plan to wing it for the entire trip with only a list of a few must see places including: Salar de Uyuni, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Mendoza, the Amazon (probably from Bolivia), Salta, Sucre, and Buenos Aires. We also want to spend a couple of weeks down the coast of Uruguay relaxing.

Thanks for your help, any recommendations will be greatly appreciated.

My wife and I travelled around South America and stayed at cheap hotels and hostels. A card is really not needed... and the best rated places were never affiliated with those 'card' places.

We booked everything by looking at reviews on Trip Advisor, hostelbookers, or hostelworld. We stayed in some amazing places. As for your list of places:

Buenos Aires: Yira Yira Guest House
Mendoza: Don't stay at Los Varietales... pretty blah

In Venezuela, they didn't even know about hostel cards. They had multi-bed hostels and single room hostels, but none requiring cards. For Europe, yes. South America, no.

There are few countries where HI/YHA memberships (which is what I assume you are talking about) will pay off. I have a lifetime membership for my travels in Canada, since the bulk of our hostels here are HI...I have probably recovered most of the cost by now, about 10 years on. I have NEVER used it overseas. Not in South America. Not in the Middle East. Not in Europe either, though there are some countries there where it would be beneficial.

agreed here with most comments. The exceptions are in BsAs, where the hostels were cheaper with cards, and in Brazil there are alot of decent HI hostels, though there are decent non-HI hostels as well. I've travelled extensively in SA, and have only used a card in those places. I believe I bought one in Brazil one year when I was traveling around there, but since then have not found much benefit to having one.

hostel bookers and the like are great to get other people's opinions of the places you're considering.

hth,

eileen

5 years and counting in Chile
my expat blog: www.bearshapedsphere.com