After our two weeks traveling around Peru, we want to share our itinerary with you and what we would do differently. Pouring over every detail for months, it can seem like the perfect itinerary had been created for the trip of our dreams, but even with all of the preparation and research, we still learned a thing or two and would strongly suggest some changes to our trip! Because we learned SO MUCH, this will actually be split into two different posts since our trip really was two different parts.
Week One:
Day 1: Fly to Lima, overnight Lima
Day 2: Fly to Arequipa, afternoon tour, overnight in Arequipa
Day 3: Van to Colca Canyon region, overnight in Chivay
Day 4: Colca Canyon tour, van to Puno, overnight in Puno
Day 5: Day trip to reed islands on Lake Titicaca, visit to Taquile Island, overnight in Puno
Day 6: All day bus to Cusco from Puno, overnight in Cusco
For the second week of our trip, check out part 2!
Day 1-What we did:
Flew from Miami to Lima and stayed overnight to fly to Arequipa.
What we would recommend:
If you aren’t going to Arequipa and are planning to head to Cusco first, stay a night or two in Lima on the front end. After Cusco you won’t want to explore this city (and we can’t blame you).
Day 2-What we did:
Went on a tour of Arequipa including the monastery.
What we would recommend:
Absolutely take a tour of Arequipa and end at the monastery. If you’re super interested in learning about the functionality of the monastery (or had more than four hours sleep) do a tour. If you don’t really care, or had four hours of sleep, skip the tour. It’s very easy to wander around on your own. Pro tip: go closer to sunset for less people and stunning colors.
What we did:
Ate dinner at Zig Zag in Arequipa at the recommendation of our tour guide.
What we would recommend:
Eat dinner at Zig Zag. It turned out to be one of the BEST meals of the trip!
Day 3-What we did:
Slept (sort of) and then started our next tour early in the morning.
What we would recommend:
Sleep in and stay another day in Arequipa. The town is adorbs and we didn’t get to explore it AT ALL because of an early morning tour departure. It’s also a good stopping point to get acclimated to the altitude.
What we did:
Spent a day getting to Colca Canyon.
What we recommend:
Skip this part. We saw some volcanoes and that was cool, but the altitude was killer and it’s a long day in a van. Overall we felt like it wasn’t necessarily worth it because we weren’t huge fans of the end destination – the canyon.
What we did:
Stayed the night in Chivay before Colca Canyon.
What we recommend:
If you are staying the night to do Colca Canyon please stay at the Casa Andina Standard Colca, it was so cute we could hardly stand it. But be warned, it’s off of a not so nice looking street. They have security and a big gate out front though, so we felt perfectly safe. Sadly, we didn’t have a chance to explore the little “town” since we were exhausted from walking around. Ya’ll walking around at 12,000+ feet all day is really taxing.
Day 4-What we did:
A tour of Colca Canyon before heading onward to Puno/Lake Titicaca.
What we would recommend:
Skip this. Yes it’s a large canyon, and something like the second largest in the world, but in the end we were REALLY underwhelmed. Talking to some other people who have gone, they liked it, but to us it seemed like a far drive to see a canyon that looks more like mountains. There were birds (condors) and maybe they are cool if you like birds, but really they looked like huge vultures. If you can’t tell, not a highlight from our perspective.
What we did:
Drove to Puno.
What we recommend:
Figure out how to go from Arequipa to Puno/Lake Titicaca without driving. Flying might be a pain (you’d fly into Juliaca, Peru) but totally worth it. You could also skip Arequipa and go straight to Puno/Lake Titicaca from Lima. Or skip Puno/Lake Titicaca entirely and go to Cusco from Lima-this is a very popular way to “do Peru.”
Day 5-What we did:
Took a day trip to the Uros (reed) floating islands and Taquile Island.
What we recommend
Find an ALL DAY reed island tour, OR one that also includes a stay overnight on the lake. DO NOT and we repeat, DO NOT go to Taquile Island. Don’t, seriously. This was partially our bad for not more closely reading/researching our itinerary, but legit all of us thought we were going to die at some point this day. Right, so that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift. From the Uros Islands it’s an hour and a half boat ride to Taquile Island and there really isn’t much to see on the way there. No big deal right? Surely the island will be worth it. WRONG! There’s NOTHING to see on the island itself, and it is physically the most difficult thing we’ve ever done. Yeah we know what you’re thinking, and we do work out. The highest part of the island sits at over 13,000 feet. And there’s not a lot of oxygen at that altitude. Add in having to walk STRAIGHT UP a paved ramp and it is less than ideal. Once your lungs have exploded and you finally reach the top, you are rewarded with a dusty and damn near empty main square. The views of Taquile are meh, the views from Taqulie are fine but totally not worth the pain of getting there. And what goes up, must come down. Stairs. Over 500 of them to get down. And not stairs that are nice, stairs built out of rocks from the island. So unless you LOVE….well actually we can’t think of a reason to go to this island at all. Even if you do love hiking, it’s not worth it. On the flip-side, the reed islands are the bomb digity and we wish we had stayed all day. Seriously a highlight and it was only a couple of hours we were there.
What we did:
Went to a traditional Peruvian show and dinner.
What we recommend:
Actually go to one. Some of our group was very skeptical of this decision having done them in other countries where it was so cheesy it was awful. But this was oddly entertaining and the costuming was insane. We really enjoyed it!
Day 6-What we did:
Took the Wonder bus to Cusco from Puno.
What we recommend:
For a bus ride that bills itself as 9-10 hours long (yeah a whole day), we were skeptical at best that this was the ideal way to get to Cusco since there’s an airport not all that far from Puno. However, it seems after some research it’s really the most cost effective way. We didn’t hate this day at all (even though we were seriously dreading it) and our only tip would be to research the company before booking. There are some that are more luxurious than others!
What we did:
Went to Peru for two weeks
What we recommend:
Go to Peru for one week (Cusco, Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu) and then go to another South American destination. Not that we didn’t have a great time, that’s not it. We just loved our Cusco, Sacred Valley and MP experience SO MUCH, that to us, your time is better spent exploring another nearby country. Here are the rest of our recommendations!
