Best/cheapest way to mail things to South America?

[K and L 27]

We use USPS all the time for small things (letters, photos, documents) to go to Brasil, but for packages and what not? There's nothing quite as special as being charged 3x in taxes what the sender spent to buy it, even when there's a receipt ... so we just bring 'em with us when we visit

[ardilla 0]

To send things to Peru (Lima) quickly we have used USPS over and over again without fail. We've never had a single document go missing (including postcards!). In fact some of them reach Lima from our house within 1 week. Pretty good. I think we have good luck and of course we give a gratuity to the postal worker at the end of the year (same as in the US).

If it's important, try using SkyBox. Items are tracked and they can even deliver to your house. We've also had very good luck with this service. See below for the link. This works for documents as well as for purchasing things directly to have them sent to you.

http://www.skybox.net/x.aspx?x=home&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

[ardilla 0]

you can also try bongo (this is another mail forwarding service - goes to various countries and you can send from Peru to USA too)

http://bongous.com/es/mail_forwarding_services.php

[LoveinPeru 2]

everything actually got there pretty quickly with USPS, i had all the documents scanned just in case it never arrived, but it got there in 5 days (including weekends). So i didn't need scanned documents after all. It did cost about $50 to send USPS express.