Some paper maps would be good. In some countries (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, the Guyanas and Venezuela) it's almost impossible to find a decent road map, since most people there ride buses and don't need to know how to get where they're going. I use a GPS myself but I still like having paper maps for longer-term planning. The best ones are probably Rough Guide, Nelles and ITMB. None of them are perfect of course, and they vary by country. Just go with whichever of those three you can find locally or online. I liked having the big ITMB South America one as well, 1:4,000,000 scale I think, with the northern half of SA on one side and southern on the other, for really long-term planning and for those long conversations with other cyclists. In Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Colombia you can get maps and road atlases locally that are better than what you can get up here.
Last edited by jkruys; 11-11-12 at 09:57 PM.
Reason: typo