Best South America Tour Company for Backpackers
If you are looking to travel to South America, then I would definitely recommend G Adventures. They also offer group travel and they have a very large variety of tours available for South/Central/North America and worldwide. For more trip ideas including language courses, jobs and volunteering check out these South America gap year trips.
You can book with companies like Oasis Overland and Tucan Travel on their expedition trips which are at times too basic and have very little inclusions. Also their driving days are very long especially in Southern Patagonia. Its sort of a tour for the hard core outdoors type traveller who does not mind basic accommodation, camping, likes hiking in rough environments. Group size can be quite large - up 30 or more.
Some discovery (higher end) style tours tend to cater towards older people and a young person will kind of feel out of place on tour.
G Adventures cater more to the mainstream traveller. It is like travelling with new friends on public transport and utilising high standard centrally located hostels, resorts at a very reasonable price. A tour leader who is a local of the region or is very familiar will organise or show you main attractions, sites, places to have a meal. Lots of social wind down drinking at local places. Predominantly mid 20's to early 30's on tour and also usually experienced travellers who have backpacked quite extensively through many countries, continents. Group size maximum of 15 participants. I've also used them in India and they apply essentially the same transport and accommodation framework.
Check out their site as quite often they release their tours at significant discounts.
Season of travel is also something that needs to be considered. Flights are really expensive to get there, but once there everything is relatively inexpensive. For South America it will be very challenging and extremely frustrating if you don't speak Espanol or Portuguese fluently. Its best to take a tour.