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We went to Europe for 2 weeks when LO was 10-11 months old. I would choose Europe over South America for a child under 1 year. You can check with what your pediatrician recommends, but your LO may be too young for some of the CDC recommended vaccinations.

I'd pick South America because I'm afraid of time zones and LOs sleep getting screwed up.

Definitely do it if you can! J has been to Venice (at 5 months) and London and Ireland (at 10 months). Both trips were lots of fun, and I think he had a lot of fun too, with all the new people interacting with him. He actually got over the jet lag more quickly than we did, both times! I would also suggest Europe, as I'd want to be sure to have access to Western-standard medical care, just in case.

Europe has a lot of kinderhotels, not sure about S. America, so I would pick that. The kinderhotels are usually in the resort areas, but I imagine there are at least a few in the larger metro areas.

I'd do Europe. We went to Europe, actually an around the world trip, when LO was 5.5 - 7 months old and it was so easy. We went to Indonesia when LO was 14 months and it was NOT easy, albeit still super fun. I'd equate South America to Indonesia in terms of travel ease. Here's what we found easy/difficult with both places:

Europe:
* clean, safe drinking water
* mostly pram friendly ETA: I should add the word 'relatively' here! More so that you actually have decent footpaths to push the pram along. I would take a small umbrella pram though - definitely not a big old monster of a pram!
* facilities designed for children (high chairs, changing tables in bathrooms at some places)
* easy to get baby supplies you may need
* feeding baby (in autumn, your baby will be around 9-11 months old, right?) will be fine, won't have to worry about safety of food quality
- long flight from PNW, although we did a 25 hr journey and it was fine. Just get a bassinet seat when you book your flight!
- time zones are tricky, but LO slept so much on the flights, it only took two to three days every time to adjust to the new time zone

South America (our Indonesia experience) - I'll just list our difficulties as SA will have totally different positives, albeit numerous ones:
- unsafe drinking water makes simple tasks that much harder (washing spoons, cups etc)
- depending where you are, pram friendliness is not great so baby wearing would probably have to be your go to option
- certain illnesses we don't think about in the US are more prevalent in SA, possibly requiring extra vaccinations or extra precautions if LO is too young to receive them
- road safety is much more lax

The other thing I would mention is that if you could go a couple of months earlier, say when baby is 6 months or younger, you would likely have a much easier time, regardless of destination, as your LO would still be on BM or formula, not mobile, and still pretty happy to sleep anywhere. Those things really do make a world of difference!

Anyway, I wrote a novel, sorry! I hope some of it helps though...

we went to London at 5 months and it was the perfect age to travel.
It was much easier to baby wear, as London is not stroller friendly

@Vegmama: I think it is good to have both, but I also think it depends on how long you are out and about and if you do naps while out or need to go back to the hotel. DS never really napped in his stroller, so we always had to go back to the hotel for nap time. We always had both the stroller and baby carrier with us, except we forgot to take it to London, so we just had the stroller there. I am not a huge fan of baby wearing, I easily get tired of it, but DH could wear the baby much longer. We took our Maclaren, so it is a smaller stroller. The worst was carrying it up and down stairs in some places, especially public transit, or getting it to fit in tiny restaurants.