assistance with South America flights
 

Hi,
Many folks took the time to respond to my post about a month ago seeking opinions on a planned 3 1/2-week holiday to Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia starting late May. Thank you.
My questions this time concern flights within the continent. We intend to start the trip by flying into Quito from the USA. Then work south to Peru (Lima & Cusco, respectively) and Bolivia (La Paz & Uyuni, respectively).
I am having difficulty deciding which city to return to the USA from. Lima or Santiago, Chile? It seems most, if not all, USA-bound flights depart from these 2 cities late in the day. This is fine. However, I cannot find suitable flights to these cities from Uyuni, Obviously I prefer flights with minimal connections or layovers.
The tools I have used so far include Kayak, Skyscanner and Expedia. Does anyone know other resources that can help in my situation?
Our itinerary so far is:
Quito: 3 nights
Galapagos: 1 week
Lima: 3 nights
Cusco: 4 nights
La Paz: 2-3 nights
Uyuni: 3 nights

I appreciate it.

All flights from Uyuni go to La Paz. Airlines running that route are Amaszonas and BOA. Timings apart, I have had much better experiences with BOA in terms of reliability and aircraft safety.

From LP you can fly direct to either Santiago or Lima with LATAM (and possibly even get a through ticket to your home destination from LP) .

I don’t know how fixed your timings are but personally, I would probably allow for a night in LP after Uyuni. Partly because of possible delays as these are high altitude airports and also because after three nights of roughing it in sub zero temps, with no showers, I really needed a decent bed and a VERY long shower. I am sure my fellow passengers on the plane were very grateful too :-)

There are no international flights from Uyuni, it's a tiny airport and also subject to flight cancellations. I would probably put Uyuni before La Paz for that reason on your schedule (and you may have to split the La Paz nights.)

Then I would look at flying out of La Paz to your end destination on one ticket (so as to factor in missed connections.)


Probably Lima works out best if you decide to book your own connections.

matrixitasoftware.com might be of help

Lima has at least two airlines (jetBlue and American) flying back to the US non-stop