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I initially wanted to do a detailed post on our trip to Peru, but then I realized that everything I will say can be sourced through all the AI tools anyway. Instead I am just going to jot down all the things that worked and did not work for us in Peru, and what opportunities might have we missed. We spent 1 night in Lima, 2 in Paracas, 3 in Sacred Valley and 1 night in Cusco before heading back to the USA. We pretty much planned the entire trip ourselves and it was a good call to save on money because Peru is frigging expensive!

Roses

• Doing Paracas was a great idea. While Machu Picchu is the bucket list item to go to Peru, the sand dunes at Huacachina are a sight to behold. Plus a boat ride away to see Penguins and sea lions forming a new family colony? priceless! The Paracas coast is beautiful, and we also got a chance to see a 2000+ year old Paracan lines (older than Nazca). The sand dunes are nearly 300-500mts and some of the tallest anywhere in the world. They are huge!

• Food in Lima (And in general, Peru) is spectacular. So much flavor and these folks love their spice. We could have stayed a day more in Lima (though there is not much to see) just for food. One of the most flavorful cuisines we’ve had.

• I was the only guy in our group supposed to have shopped for baby alpaca sweater. Turns out everyone else shopped way more than I did. It was great to visit a textile farm in Chinchero where the women showed us how they weave the wool. We put on Peruvian costumes and had a small dance party too. The lady who gave the demonstration made a human bone joke that felt so real I shuddered. No, it was just a llama bone but she sold it so well.

• Language was never an issue. Peruvians are just so nice people. Almost none of our car drivers knew English yet we chatted fluently through translation apps. Some of them went out of their way to show us things we would have missed.

• Stray dogs. My god, so many of them, and so cute. And all of them look well fed, well trained and well behaved. Like what gives? Does the society just take care of dogs?

• April is the season to go! Why? The rain has just about stopped. Everything is lush and green with flowers. We were comparing Pervuvian landscapes to Canadian Rockies and Swiss alps all the time. I have heard that by July everything brows out so it’s not as beautiful. April was perfect month to travel!

• It was a good call to do the all-inclusive Inca Rail ticket. It was fucking expensive, but it would have been nearly same if I had booked things separately. It came down to almost 350 bucks a head for a train-bus-guidedtour-bus-train ticket, not counting additional moolah you will spend on taxis and food by yourselves. Machu Picchu was worth it though, but we won’t go again.

• taxidatum, our taxi service that we used throughout for transfers between cities and airports, turned out well. None of the drivers spoke English but we managed with translate app and they tried hard. Uber works in Lima but nowhere else. Taxidatum is cost effective but they don’t provide “guide” services. The ones that provide guide and taxi tend to be more expensive but worth it if you are into it. With taxidatum we made our own itinerary daily and it helped with the flexibility of it.

• splitting sacred valley across 2 days was a smart move. Day one we did chinchero, moray and Maras salt mines. Day 2 we did pisaq ruins, pisaq market (not worth it!), and coachahuasi animal sanctuary to see the giant condors! Coachahuasi was totally worth it and it was nice knowing our money goes to conserving animals impacted by abuse. Plus the condors are magnificent!

Thorns

• The travel to and fro to Paracas was not easy. We took private transfers, but it was 4 hours one way. On the way back from Paracas, we spent an entire day in car – we drove from Paracas to Lima airport, flew to Cusco, then took another 2 hour car ride to Sacred Valley. Needless to say we were exhausted on that day.

• Traffic in Lima is horrendous and is often rated amongst the top 5 worst in the world, of which Bangalore is a part too. So imagine!

• Baby alpaca products are expensive. While we bought from the textile shop, there was just no way to know the authenticity of it. I did massive gemini research of the place and it looks like we did get authentic stuff, but who knows? Funny enough, baby alpaca items were cheaper in Cusco where we could have just shopped instead. So no only did we not know the authenticity, we kinda maybe overpaid also.

• It’s funny how dirty cities are except for major tourist places. A good part of Cusco stank with so much trash on roads spilling. Same with Lima. Same with smaller towns and villages. Of course once you hit the main touristy spots it was speck and clean.

• Altitude is REAL. Especially in Cusco. By day 4 between Cusco and Sacred Valley almost everyone in our group had minor headaches, queasy / diarrhea stomach and general sense of ugh. We couldn’t sleep well anywhere in mountains due to altitudes, and the hikes were a pain. Altitude adjustment is very real here. Many of the sites are at > 11000 ft, so taking it slow was the key!

• Water in Peru sucks, but not like brushing with mineral water sucks. Book a good hotel – drink bottled water, but no need to go out of your way to use it for everything. If you have evolved to use mineral water for brushing, just don’t travel.

• Per mile, the Machu Picchu train is one of the most expensive in the world. Getting to MP is a task – you take a train, then a bus, then a guided tour and do the same thing in reverse again. While MP itself is incredible, you probably only want to do it once. That said the town of Aguiles Caliente is nice but super disconnected.

• There really are not many good hotel options outside of Cusco. We stayed in a 5 star in scared valley which was good but was so isolated we had to either eat there or make sure or eat out before heading in. While sacred valley is almost 1500ft below Cusco, and we chose it because of acclimatization I now feel that staying in Cusco to acclimatize might have not been bad. We would have had a lot more options to eat and sleep than anywhere else.

• you get tired of ruins sooner than you think. All of Incan ruins / agricultural patterns are same. So by time you see your third ruin you will be done. That said both chinchero and pisaq are worth doing! We missed doing ollantayambo ruins but how different could they be?

• sand surfing was fun but we got to do it only once! Again we did not do enough research on sand dune operators. Ours was great but with a little research we would have found better. At 60 bucks for sand dunes and 20 bucks a head for boat ride to see penguins, we thought it was a deal though.

Buds

• We could have spent another day in Paracas just to chill out a bit and maybe go see Nazca lines. It also would have added more costs though.

• We should have done more research on alpaca sweaters and shops in Cusco. In general it’s a better idea to just shop in Cusco instead of these textile mills who price their stuff higher and then give a so-called discount.

• Take altitude patches, but do not under estimate altitude here. Also because of altitude its actually not possible to do much hikes like other places. While Peruvian Andes is beautiful, multi hour hikes for us was not possible. Unless you’re super fit the altitude will get you. That way Canadian Rockies or Swiss alps are so much more hike able.

• Peru has too much to offer but good quality is expensive. For just 2k more dollars we spent 2 weeks in Spain and here we just were there for 8 days. I was not expecting it but it’s a good point to consider for future South American trips. Our friends who went to Argentina and Brazil at same time as us also said those countries were expensive too.

Overall

All in all, it was a great memorable trip. Going to Paracas and sand dunes was everyone’s highlight of trip. LATAM proved to be a good airline with enough connectivity between Cusco and Lima. Intercity transfers were a pain, but ultimately it was worth it! However Peru is a once and done destination. I don’t see any reason to ever be back again.