South America Travel Guide: Complete Country-by-Country Planning (2026)

Which South American countries let you in without a visa, and what the 90 days actually means

Most nationalities enter most of South America without a visa for up to 90 days, but the ceiling, the counting period and the paperwork are set separately by each immigration service, and that is where long trips come apart. Each country here carries its official position on 5 September 2026, taken from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office entry-requirement page for that country, and each should be re-checked against the authority named with it, because these rules change by decree and without notice.

Peru. No visa for tourism. The permission granted at the border is normally up to 90 days in a 180-day period, and immigration may grant up to 183 days within a 365-day period. Your passport must have an expiry date at least six months after the date you arrive. The FCDO is blunt about overstaying: you will get a fine and you could be detained.

Colombia. Up to 90 days without a visa for business or tourism, at the discretion of the immigration officer on arrival, and you cannot remain more than 180 days in any 12-month period. The Check-Mig form speeds up entry but the Colombian authorities state it is not mandatory, and it is filed between 72 hours and one hour before you travel.

Ecuador. Up to 90 days in any 12-month period, with a further 90 available on a paid application made once you are already in the country. The Galápagos are separate: up to 60 days, and you must show a hotel booking or an invitation letter from your host, evidence of a return flight to the Ecuadorean mainland, a transit control card bought at your departure airport before you check in, and travel health insurance, which is mandatory for foreign tourists.

Bolivia. Up to 90 days without a visa across a one-year period, and here is the detail that saves an argument at the desk. The FCDO states that border officials issue 30-day stamps but you can stay for 90 days without any new stamp, so a 30-day stamp is not a 30-day limit. Passports need six months of validity and two blank pages, and you should check you actually receive both entry and exit stamps, because a missing one produces a fine when you leave. Bolivia also still sorts nationalities into three lists: its consular network states that Grupo I nationals do not require a tourist entry visa, Grupo II nationals do, and Grupo III applicants require prior consultation with the consular office. Those consular pages do not publish which country sits in which group and do not quote a fee, so confirm your own group with the Dirección General de Migración rather than trusting an amount quoted on a travel site.

Chile. Up to 90 days without a visa, with a tourist card issued on arrival, the tarjeta de turismo, an A5-sized white form you keep safe and hand to immigration when you leave. If you lose it, a replacement is requested from the PDI, the investigations police, online or at a local office. Your passport needs an expiry date after the day you plan to leave. Rapa Nui adds its own entry form, a return ticket, and either a reservation registered with SERNATUR, the national tourism service, or an invitation letter from the provincial delegation.

Argentina. Up to 90 days for tourism. To stay for another 90-day period the FCDO tells you to get advice from the Argentine Migration Office before your current stay ends, not after it. Your passport must be valid for the proposed duration of your stay.

Brazil. British citizens get up to 90 days for tourism, on a passport valid at least six months beyond arrival. United States, Canadian and Australian ordinary passport holders do not travel visa-free: Brazil reinstated the visa requirement for those three nationalities from 10 April 2025. Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations describes the route as an electronic visitor visa applied for online, priced at 80.90 US dollars, covering tourism and business stays of up to 90 days, through the portal the ministry names as brazil.vfsevisa.com. Cash or travellers cheques worth 10,000 US dollars or more must be declared online on entry.

Do you still pay a reciprocity fee to enter Argentina or Brazil?

No. Argentina stopped collecting the entry fee from every nationality that ever paid it, and what replaced the idea in Brazil is a visa applied for online rather than a desk at the airport. Any page telling you to pre-pay an Argentine reciprocity fee is years out of date.

The Argentine charge came from Decreto 1654/2008 and worked as a mirror: an entry fee payable by foreigners who needed no Argentine consular visa but whose own country charged Argentines for one. It was unwound one nationality at a time, which is why partial accounts of it still circulate.

• United States. Decreto 959/2016, published in the Boletín Oficial number 33445 on 23 August 2016, excepted from payment los ciudadanos nativos de los ESTADOS UNIDOS DE AMÉRICA que por cualquier motivo ingresen al Territorio Argentino, with article 4 setting it running 30 days after publication. Argentina’s own consular pages record collection as already suspended for US citizens from 24 March 2016.
• Australia. The same consular pages record the charge as lifted from 1 July 2017.
• Canada. Disposición 6437-E/2017 suspended it from 1 January 2018. Until then it was 100 Canadian dollars, valid for multiple entries.

That sequence matters if you are checking this yourself, because Decreto 959/2016 names United States nationals and nobody else. Australia and Canada were dealt with by later instruments, so a source that cites the 2016 decree alone is not evidence about a Canadian or an Australian passport.

Brazil went the other way, and the reciprocal principle there now runs through the visa itself. Bolivia’s charge is a different thing again, a visa fee that follows from the group lists and applies however you arrive. Chile’s published entry requirements set out the tourist card and the 90 days and no reciprocity charge, so if anyone asks you to pay one at Santiago, check with the Servicio Nacional de Migraciones before you hand over money.

How high the Andes put you, and the ascent rule that prevents most of the trouble

Cusco sits at roughly 3,350 m and La Paz at roughly 3,650 m, both figures as published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which puts La Paz within 50 m of Lhasa at roughly 3,700 m. That matters because most South America itineraries sold online break the published ascent guidance on their first or second day.

The rule is specific. Once above 3,000 m, move your sleeping altitude by no more than 500 m per day, and allow an extra day of acclimatisation for every additional 1,000 m of sleeping altitude gained. Separately, avoid going directly from low altitude, which the CDC defines as 1,200 m or under, to a sleeping altitude above 2,750 m in a single day. Acute mountain sickness symptoms typically begin 2 to 12 hours after arrival at high altitude or after climbing higher, so the headache that turns up at dinner on the day you fly in is the expected pattern rather than bad luck.

Two things follow. A morning flight from Lima at sea level into Cusco breaks the second rule before lunch, which is why doing nothing on day one is standard advice rather than laziness. And because day trips to high elevation with an evening return to lower ground are, in the CDC’s words, much less stressful on the body, sleeping lower than the highest point you visit is worth engineering into the plan rather than leaving to chance.

Acetazolamide hastens acclimatisation and reduces how often and how badly acute mountain sickness appears. The CDC gives a preventive dose of 125 mg every 12 hours, beginning the day before ascent and continuing through the first two days at altitude. That is a prescribing conversation to have with a doctor before you leave, not a decision to make at a pharmacy counter in Cusco.

Why the dry season and the summer are not the same season in South America

The continent runs several climate calendars at once, and treating South America as one season is the most expensive planning mistake available. These averages come from the WMO World Weather Information Service, which publishes normals supplied by each national meteorological service; the reference period differs by station, so Ushuaia is given on 1981 to 2010 and Bogotá on 1971 to 2000.

The Andean dry season is the Andean winter. At Cuzco the average June rainfall is 1.5 mm and July 4.0 mm, against 145.3 mm in January, and those same months average daily minimum temperatures of 0.3 C and 0.1 C. The reliable trekking window is also the window in which it freezes overnight, so the sleeping bag rating matters more than the rain jacket. Arequipa is starker: 0.0 mm in both June and July.

Patagonia’s season is the opposite half of the year. Ushuaia averages a January maximum of 14.5 C and a June maximum of 4.2 C, with precipitation in every month from 34.5 mm in September to 56.4 mm in June, so there is no dry season to wait for, only a warmer one. El Calafate averages 18.9 C in January against 4.7 C in July, and a July mean minimum of minus 5.4 C.

Near the equator the year barely moves. Bogotá averages between 14.9 C in July and 16.7 C in February and March, an annual range under two degrees, and its rain comes in two peaks rather than one, 101 mm in April and 107 mm in October. Quito is the same shape, driest in July at 21.5 mm.

So a highlands trip through Peru and Bolivia and a Patagonia trip pull against each other: June to September is dry in the Andes while the far south is cold and thinly served, and December to February is Patagonia’s season and the Andean wet season. If both are non-negotiable, November and March are the compromise.

Amazon high water and low water: two different trips, not a better and a worse one

The Amazon does not really have a dry season, it has a water level, and the level decides what you can physically do. The gauge that settles the argument is Manaus, station 14990000 on the Rio Negro, owned by Brazil’s Agência Nacional de Águas e Saneamento Básico and operated by the Serviço Geológico do Brasil, with a record running from 1903 to 2025.

The 35th Boletim de Alerta Hidrológico da Bacia do Amazonas, issued in Manaus on 1 September 2026, put the river at 2,404 cm and falling, down 85 cm over the preceding week. That bulletin states that 73 per cent of years reach their maximum in June and 24 per cent in July, and that the end of the drawdown falls between October and November in 91 per cent of years.

The same bulletin carries the extremes the record has actually produced at that gauge. The highest reading in the series is 3,002 cm on 16 June 2021; the lowest is 1,213 cm on 3 November 2024. The agency’s technical note of 16 September 2025 puts the ordinary swing between roughly 28 m at the top and 17.50 m at the bottom, a mean amplitude of 10.50 m, with the flood running May to July and the drawdown August to December.

High water floats a small boat into flooded forest and puts the canopy within reach. Low water exposes river beaches and walking trails and concentrates fish and the animals that follow them. In a severe low-water year the constraint stops being comfort and becomes navigation, because river transport is what most Amazon lodges depend on. Two numbers tell you how much year-to-year difference there can be: on 1 September 2026 the gauge stood 576 cm higher than it had on the same date in 2024. September and October also carry the largest standard deviation in the whole monthly record, which makes them the hardest months to plan blind, and the technical note reports annual minima falling at 4.3 cm per year since the 1970s while annual maxima rise, so the gap between a high year and a low one is widening.

Which South American countries actually demand a yellow fever certificate

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela require proof of yellow fever vaccination from travellers arriving from countries WHO determines to be at risk of transmission. Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay require nothing. French Guiana requires it from everyone, arriving from any country. That is Annex 1 of WHO’s International Travel and Health, dated 18 November 2022 and revised on 3 January 2023, which is the list border officials work from.

The age threshold on every South American requirement in that annex is one year and above, and the footnotes cause most of the arguments at the desk. Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela carry a note that the list of countries their requirement applies to is not identical to WHO’s own risk list, so the trigger is their list, not the map. Colombia, Ecuador, Suriname and Venezuela also require proof from travellers who have transited more than 12 hours through an airport in a risk country, and Guyana sets that threshold at more than 4 hours, short enough to catch an ordinary connection. One oddity is worth knowing if you are checking the annex yourself: Paraguay’s entry carries a second footnote number that the printed footnote list does not define, so confirm Paraguay’s transit rule with a Paraguayan consulate rather than reading it off the table.

Brazil and Peru are both listed as carrying transmission risk in parts of the country while imposing no certificate requirement, and Argentina appears only as a risk area in Misiones and Corrientes provinces. Vaccination being medically sensible and vaccination being demanded at a border are separate questions, and the annex answers only the second.

The certificate does not expire. Under the amendment to Annex 7 of the International Health Regulations adopted by the World Health Assembly in resolution WHA67.13, from 11 July 2016 the period of validity of every yellow fever certificate changed from 10 years to the duration of the life of the person vaccinated, including certificates already issued. A valid certificate cannot be rejected on the grounds that more than 10 years have passed, and boosters or revaccination cannot be required. If a clinic tells you a 2009 certificate has lapsed, that is the provision to quote.

The catch is often on the way out. Countries that require a certificate from travellers arriving from a risk country include Australia and South Africa, both carrying the 12-hour airport transit rule, Costa Rica from nine months of age, and Panama from one year. A trip that ends with a flight from Lima or São Paulo to Sydney or Johannesburg can therefore need a certificate South America itself never asked to see. WHO adds that country requirements are subject to change at any time and should be checked with the relevant consulate or embassy before you travel.

What a long-distance bus ticket in South America actually entitles you to

The rights attached to a long-distance coach ticket are written down by a national regulator in the larger countries, and they are more generous than most travellers realise.

Brazil. The Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres regulates interstate and international coaches. Its passenger rights booklet gives free carriage of up to 30 kg in the hold, capped at 300 cubic decimetres and one metre maximum dimension, plus 5 kg of small items in the overhead rack. A ticket is valid for one year from first issue and can be rebooked within that year to the same destination, including after you have missed the departure. Cancel more than three hours before departure and you get your money back less up to 5 per cent, paid within 30 days; cancel inside three hours and you get nothing. If the company delays departure or interrupts the journey by more than an hour through its own fault, or sells the same seat twice, you may wait for its own bus, transfer to another company at no extra cost, or take an immediate refund; past three hours it owes you meals until the situation is resolved, plus accommodation if the journey cannot continue that day. Baggage lost or damaged in the hold is claimed on a form immediately after the trip, and the company then has 30 days to pay.

Argentina. The Comisión Nacional de Regulación del Transporte states that a ticket da derecho al transporte sin cargo de hasta quince (15) kilogramos, with anything heavier charged as excess, and that you are entitled to a receipt for baggage put in the hold. The ticket must carry the passenger’s name, and the CNRT is explicit that es obligatorio viajar con el documento declarado en este pasaje. For lost or damaged baggage the claim goes in within 24 hours of the end of the journey and the company has five working days to answer.

Two practical consequences. Keep the baggage receipt, because it is the document every claim rests on, and book in the name on the passport you are actually carrying. And take a complaint to the regulator rather than to desk staff: ANTT runs a passenger ombudsman on 166 and staffs inspection rooms in the main Brazilian bus terminals, and in both countries the regulator is the body with power to act. One limit worth knowing in Brazil is that the statutory free and half-price seats, for low-income passengers over 60 and for low-income passengers aged 15 to 29, apply only to convencional service, not to leito or semileito.

At a glance

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a yellow fever certificate for Peru or Brazil?

No. Neither requires proof of yellow fever vaccination for entry, according to Annex 1 of WHO’s International Travel and Health dated 18 November 2022 and revised 3 January 2023, even though both are listed as carrying transmission risk in parts of the country. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela do require it from travellers arriving from a risk country, from the age of one year, and French Guiana requires it from arrivals from anywhere. Vaccination may still be medically advisable where you are going, which is a separate question from what the border demands.

Does a yellow fever certificate expire after 10 years?

No. From 11 July 2016, under the amendment to Annex 7 of the International Health Regulations adopted in World Health Assembly resolution WHA67.13, the validity of every yellow fever vaccination certificate became the duration of the life of the person vaccinated, including certificates issued before that date. A valid certificate cannot be refused on the ground that more than 10 years have passed, and boosters or revaccination cannot be required.

Does a 30-day stamp mean you have to leave Bolivia in 30 days?

No. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office states that Bolivian border officials issue 30-day stamps but that you can stay for 90 days without any new stamp, within a one-year period. Do check that you receive both an entry and an exit stamp, because a missing one produces a fine when you leave, and carry a passport with at least six months of validity and two blank pages. Nationalities in Bolivia’s Grupo II and Grupo III need a visa arranged beforehand, so confirm your group with the Dirección General de Migración.

Do US citizens need a visa for Brazil in 2026?

Yes. Brazil reinstated a visa requirement for United States, Canadian and Australian ordinary passport holders from 10 April 2025. Brazil’s Ministry of External Relations describes the route as an electronic visitor visa applied for online, priced at 80.90 US dollars, covering tourism and business stays of up to 90 days, through the portal it names as brazil.vfsevisa.com. The Government of Canada’s destination page for Brazil separately lists a tourist visa as required for Canadians. Confirm the current fee and validity on the official portal rather than a third-party page, because both are set by the ministry and have changed before.

How long should you acclimatise before trekking from Cusco?

Long enough that your sleeping altitude has not jumped more than the published limit. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts Cusco at about 3,350 m, advises against going from low altitude, which it defines as 1,200 m or under, to a sleeping altitude above 2,750 m in one day, and above 3,000 m advises moving sleeping altitude by no more than 500 m per day with an extra day of acclimatisation for every 1,000 m gained. Acute mountain sickness usually appears 2 to 12 hours after arrival, so judge yourself the following morning rather than on landing.

Is the Amazon better in high water or low water?

They are different trips. Brazil’s Serviço Geológico do Brasil records the Rio Negro at Manaus peaking in June in 73 per cent of years and bottoming out between October and November in 91 per cent of years, with an ordinary range of about 28 m down to about 17.50 m. The series high is 3,002 cm on 16 June 2021 and the series low 1,213 cm on 3 November 2024. High water lets a small boat move through flooded forest; low water exposes beaches and walking trails and concentrates wildlife, but in a severe year river transport itself becomes the limiting factor.

How much luggage can you take on a long-distance bus in South America?

It depends whose regulator you are travelling under. In Brazil the Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres gives free carriage of up to 30 kg in the hold, capped at 300 cubic decimetres and one metre in any dimension, plus 5 kg in the overhead rack. In Argentina the Comisión Nacional de Regulación del Transporte sets the free allowance at 15 kg, with excess charged. Keep the baggage receipt in both countries, because it is the document the claim rests on, and in Brazil a claim goes in immediately after the trip with 30 days for the company to pay.