Americas

The honest verdict

🎂 Best age range

6+ if you want the altitude, big landscapes and long travel days to land properly

💰 Cost feel

£££ — not luxury-expensive, but tours, trains, tickets and transfers stack up quickly

🏆 Our favourite bit

Machu Picchu, Colca Canyon condors, La Paz cable cars and the sheer scale of the Andes

🙅 We’d skip

Maybe not skip, but underestimating altitude and long bus days. The scenery is ridiculous, but thin air and tired kids are a spicy combination.

Getting around with kids: South America gave us some of the biggest “we are actually doing this” moments of the whole trip, but it was not the easiest family travel region. Distances were long, altitude mattered, and tours often meant early starts. Trains and organised trips helped, but we had to move slower than the itinerary in our heads. The rewards were massive: mountains, condors, cable cars, ancient places and proper once-in-a-lifetime memories.