Is South America safe?
Before we set off on what should have been an amazing trip around South America, I was constantly Googling the question ‘Is South America safe for children?’ The general answer was ‘absolutely’ with some simple travel safety rules. I thought we had covered all safety basics… but one silly mistake ruined our entire holiday and sent us home early. Don’t make the same mistake, and make sure you research EVERYTHING!
The Planning
We’d been planning this trip for nearly a year. Back in 2025 we unfortunately missed out on joining the annual NomadMania conference due to a mix of tricky logistics and the chaos of trying to sell our home. We were gutted so we promised each other that we’d do whatever we could do to make it to the 2026 one, children included.
Once the house was finally sold and we’d moved out, the fun part started. We began planning out an amazing route through South America, hitting Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay, before finally wrapping things up at the conference in Brazil. Ewan went into full planning mode, he spent hours organising every single detail on a spreadsheet and spending the weeks before our flight getting it all onto our joint calendar.
We were so excited to catch up with the NomadMania crew, both old and new, and just get out there to explore the beauty and vibrancy of a new continent to us. After us and the kids said their goodbyes to friends and family, we loaded up with four weeks' worth of clothing and school work for our eldest and set off for Heathrow.
Bogota, Colombia
Bev usually suffers from extreme flight anxiety but thankfully, the flight from Heathrow to Bogota was smooth with barely any turbulence. She’d spent the last few weeks binge watching videos on YouTube and Instagram of pilots explaining all the different noises and movements planes make, which seems to have really helped. Plus, traveling with the kids meant Ewan took the window seat with them, while Bev sat across the aisle. Not having to worry about managing the kids on top of everything else definitely helped keep her anxiety at bay!
We left London at 10:05pm UK time and landed at 3:30am Colombia time after a long 10-hour flight. As soon as we touched down, we headed through border control and straight to the official taxi rank inside the terminal. We always make it a rule to get an official airport taxi when landing in a new place, it just gives you that extra layer of security and gives you time to find your footing. This is a ‘safety tip’ we have always followed. Often keeps you from being scammed too. We pulled up to our hotel around 5am, and our taxi driver was lovely enough to wait and make sure we got safely inside the building before driving off, which we really appreciated.
We headed straight to bed to get some sleep, but our youngest decided he’d had plenty of rest on the plane and opted to play instead! After a quick nap, we ventured out into the main area of Bogota for some breakfast. We tucked into some yummy Colombian food, drank some coffee, and then headed back to the room. We had a taxi booked for just after 3pm to get us back to the airport for our flight down to Chile.
Santiago De Chile,
We landed in Chile very late at night, still feeling the heavy jet lag of traveling all the way from the UK to South America. We headed straight through immigration and collected our PDI forms. The officer looked at us with a very firm face and told us, “do not lose these forms.” Message received. I handed them straight to Ewan for safekeeping and hurried the kids through to find a taxi. Our driver took us to our room for the next two nights, and we headed straight to bed, so relieved to finally have time to rest and recover.
The next morning, we woke up and walked down to a bakery just down the road from our hotel. We actually had a list of local food we wanted to try while in Chile, and we managed to tick a few things off right away. After a little walk around, we popped into the supermarket to grab some food for lunch and dinner. We decided to cook for ourselves here, knowing we might not have the kitchen space to do it at our next few hotels.
After a full day of resting, we woke up the following morning ready to go. We headed over to the airport to collect our rental car, feeling very excited to finally drive west towards the Pacific Ocean. While Ewan was sorting out the paperwork, he asked if there was any chance we could get one of the new Hyundai Santa Fe cars. The upgrade only cost a few extra dollars, so we went for it, and the kids were absolutely thrilled! With the keys in hand, we set off towards Valparaiso, making a quick stop at a supermarket and a park in Casablanca along the way.
We arrived at our lovely room in Valparaiso and were met by a very attentive host. After settling in, we enjoyed exploring a bit of the area and grabbed some takeaway pizza for dinner which was delicious. We rode on a funicular and walked around the hilly streets, soaking up all the amazing art work / graffiti. The next morning, we packed up the car, ready to head out and explore the UNESCO World Heritage part of the city.
The moment our trip changed…
We tried to park in an underground carpark, before someone came and banged on our car telling us it was “locals only!”. We had wanted to park underground due to the security.. Frustrated, we headed back round to the street parking that we had passed a few minutes before.
What happens next might make us look like total amateurs, but we usually do know what we’re doing! We were driving straight to our next hotel so all of our bags were away in the boot. We are very aware of the golden rule: never leave luggage where anyone can see it.
We had only been away from our car for a minute or two before the entire plan for the rest of our trip was completely flipped on its head.
We got out the car and walked down to the market, literally within 100 meters of where we parked, to grab a coffee and have a look around the stalls. The children got some lovely souvenirs with their own pocket money and we started walking back to the car which was visible from the market.
As we approached, Bev suddenly spotted shattered glass around the rear passenger side. We rushed closer and realised the window had been completely smashed, the back seats were pulled forward, and the majority of our luggage was gone. The items left were the children’s suitcases, our daughter’s backpack and their car seats.
Ewan rushed over to the security guards on the square while Bev called 112, hoping it would route to whatever the local emergency number was. Unfortunately, the operator didn't speak any English and Bev had very little Spanish up her sleeve to explain what had just happened. Shouting “ayuda, ayuda, mi carro smashed!” down the phone didn’t exactly seem to raise any concern on the other end. Thankfully, while this was happening, Ewan was talking to the security team who had actually seen the whole thing happen and had noted down the car model and number plate. Great, we thought, the police will get our stuff back once we get to the station!
Because there was glass all over the kids' car seats, the security team kindly drove Bev and the children straight to the police station. They arrived just before Ewan, and we were escorted inside and told to wait for the next available officer. The organization inside that station was interesting, to say the least. People coming in for non-emergencies were being seen well before us. When we finally did get seen, it was purely to take a statement and get a crime reference letter for our insurance. There was absolutely no attempt to go out and look for our things. They just told us, “we may have someone to go and help you look for stuff later, but not now” even though we were watching our items move around the area in real-time on the Apple FindMy app!
It was all incredibly frustrating. Ewan suggested going out to look for them himself but was immediately met with, “it’s too dangerous.” Ewan being Ewan, he went anyway while Bev was on the phone to her parents. He headed towards our items on the FindMy app and found a car matching the security team's description parked right where one of the Airtags was pinging. Being sensible, he just noted it down and came straight back to report it rather than trying to intervene. Still, the police didn’t seem to care.
After a lot of deliberating, we decided to just head back to the rental car drop-off and check into our hotel for the night, hoping we could refresh and come up with a proper plan of action there.
Now, I have to reiterate that we are usually very sensible. We did everything we could to avoid being a target. We’d parked in a very open, busy, and public area (only after being denied entry to the undercover car park), absolutely nothing was left on show inside the vehicle, and we hadn’t walked far from the car at all. We also had a small backpack with us, which we were certain held all of our most important things…like our passports. Unfortunately, while trying to be super organised when packing up that morning, we must have forgotten to put them back into that bag. You can only imagine the sheer panic we were feeling.
What happened next?…
Check out our next blog post for information on the British Embassy, our emergency shopping trips and how we made the most of our last few days in Chile!
Bev and Ewan
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