South America eSIM

Overland routes are what this bundle is built around. The list covers 20 countries, running the length of the Pacific side through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, across to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil, and up through Central America to Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. A month of buses and border crossings on that route stays on one profile, which is the whole case for buying regional instead of a stack of country plans.

The gaps are worth knowing before you commit. Venezuela, Guyana and Suriname are not on the list, so the north-eastern shoulder of the continent is uncovered, and Mexico sits outside this bundle entirely. Puerto Rico, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy are included, which is useful if your route finishes with a flight out to the islands and irrelevant if it does not.

Sizes here track trip length rather than habit. 1 GB over 7 days at $11.99 covers a short work trip or a single city. 3 GB over 15 days at $28.99 fits a two-week loop, while 5 GB and 10 GB both run 30 days at $42.99 and $74.99 for a longer overland run. Every standard plan tops up mid-trip, so under-buying is recoverable and over-buying is not.

Crossing a border asks nothing of you: the phone drops the old network and registers on the next country's partner coverage, with your balance untouched. Be realistic about terrain, though. Signal follows cities, towns and main highways, and long stretches of high Andes, altiplano and Amazon go quiet on any network. The trade-off against single-country plans is price per gigabyte, so this bundle makes sense from about the second or third border onward.

• Set the eSIM as your mobile data line and turn Data Roaming on for that line only.
• Save offline maps for long bus days; signal follows towns and highways, not the stretches between.
• Download tickets and booking confirmations before altitude or jungle legs, where coverage often disappears.
• Your home SIM stays in the phone for OTP codes, since this line has no number.
• Top up before a border day rather than after, in case coverage is weak on arrival.