Whole new continent among travels this, and starting the blog with some videos, then some broad tips, and finally getting into the details of the cities visited:
Video links:
Mountain:
Jungle:
In Bolivia:
Broad Tips:
1. Learn a bit of Spanish. English is rarely spoken, and Spanish is quite an easy language to learn. Can save a lot of hassle from doing Dumb Charades to turning on data to use Google Translate to communicate when required.
2. Online content is quite limited and dated for South America. For example, I lost my way searching for cable car station online in La Paz, and websites on Lima airport claim buses to be the only mode of transport, but in reality, taxis are not just faster but even cost the same for 2 people!
3. It's wise to not have the entire itinerary booked in advance when it comes to travel in South America. Lots of cheaper and better options are available when you ask locally, and usually available for immediate booking as well. Staying flexible and not completely relying on online content and planning 100% is recommended here.
4. The day trip to Machu Picchu can be done from Cuzco, Ollantaytambo or Aquas Calientes, but only Aquas Calientes gives the option to catch the first bus at 5:30am to catch one of the most picturesque sunrises ever.
5. Carry lots of USD. Most places accept this currency and can therefore be useful when you don't have Soles or Bolvians handy.
6. Carry print outs of the itinerary. Especially for the Visa on arrival process at La Paz, as a lot of information on hard copies were requested. But the immigration officers at the airport are really helpful in any case and allow you to pass through to get prints and even exchange money before coming back and stamping the Visa on the passport.
7. Carry standard size bags if possible, since liquids are allowed in carry on luggage, and can therefore save $25 every time a big bag is checked in.
8. If you're planning to avoid carbs, forget about it! South America is home to numerous varieties of potatoes, corn and quinoa. I never knew there could be so many variants of these, and each of them actually have a different and a great taste. Aji Pastel is the standard breakfast which is corn boiled and mixed with fruits and herbs and drunk as a smoothie.
9. Pisco Sour is the most popular alcoholic drink and Inka Cola the non-alcoholic cold brew and Coca Tea the non-alcoholic hot brew. Coca Tea is the only one worth having. Pisco Sour gets better in Bolivia, but tastes like industrial tequila in Peru.
10. Peru is known for 3 different regions; coast, mountain and jungle (now you get the reference in the video links above), where everything from language to food is different.
The capital city of Lima is the most likely place to see the coast where Spanish is the most spoken language and Ceviche the most popular dish.
The cities around Machu Picchu (Cuzco, Ollantaytambo and Aquas Calientes) make up the mountain region where Quechua is the Incan language, and meat like beef and pork are common food.
Finally, Iquitos is the most popular stop for jungle, where Juane is the common dish and Yagua the popular tribal language, in which I can now say 1-2-3 as Tarahi-Narahu-Momuri.
11. Most people pack proficiently for coast (swim wear) and mountain (winter wear), but miss out on jungle. Ample full-sleeve cotton shirts and trousers to prevent mosquito bites and excessive sunlight, while ensuring you don't burn up like you would in jeans is essential. I had to repeat the few "jungle wear" clothes I carried, which was not a good idea as I soiled them quickly with both sweat and dirt.
Details of the places visited:
Lima
The capital of Peru, and the most likely first South American stop for people visiting Machu Picchu.
Much of the City is accessed by this one road which has a beach on one side and re-engineered mountains on the other side.
Miraflores is the only part of Lima worth visiting/staying in, given the surfer-inundated beaches, an interesting broadwalk called Malecon, and numerous restaurants like:
Known as the food capital for all of South America, Lima makes up with places to eat where it lacks in places to see.
Starting right from the airport which is more like a mall, lined with stores to shop and eat from, there are loads of options like Tanta:
Within the city of Lima, Central is the best restaurant, repeatedly rated among the top 5 in the world where people take reservation many months in advance. We were lucky to have a table on the very first day we landed here, and find the mouth watering details here.
Cuzco
Town at an elevation of 3000m, which causes altitude sickness when you first land in the city, resulting in nausea, headaches and sleep disorders.
All of us went through one symptom or the other the day we landed. Acclimatising takes up to 2 days, and there was a point even after that when I climbed 6 floors to our apartment at a very normal pace, and when I reached the top, I was completely out of breath and struggled to get back to normalcy. The air is really thin and strenuous physical activity is not recommended.
Passing through the city can't be avoided if visiting Machu Picchu from Lima. However, one option to reduce the struggle with altitude sickness is to immediately start the road travel from Cuzco onward to Ollantaytambo or Aquas Calientes once you land in Cuzco from Lima.
The other option is to drink the Coca Tea which is offered as the dried Coca leaves right at the Cuzco airport itself when you land. It's supposed to be a mild stimulant and helps alleviate altitude sickness.
The best option however is to just give yourself a few days to naturally acclimatize, and Cuzco is a great town for this as it offers a lot to see with the Sacred Valley Tour.
The airport of Cuzco is fairly underdeveloped. There is a WiFi that pops up on the phone, but never connects. The boarding pass is printed on what looks like a credit card receipt. There are people even selling you things while you stand in line for check in. The only good thing is a bunch of ATMs from which you can withdraw both Soles and Dollars.
The city of Cuzco is also quite under developed. Vast stretches of houses can be seen with just the red bricks and no paint. Cars on the road and shops on the streets all look a part of a small hill town of Kashmir.
There is an attractive square in the center of the City dotted by churches, museums and even a Starbucks and KFC in the same theme as the rest of the buildings. There are loads of restaurants as well here, and we ate at these places:
Ollantaytambo
The town en route Cuzco to Aquas Calientes where people switch from road transport to rail transport except if you wish to drive all the way from Cuzco to Aquas Calientes.
Most people avoid driving all the way as it is more expensive, tiresome and also less scenic. So the best alternative is road from Cuzco to Ollantaytambo, and switch to either the Peru rail or Inca rail further from Cuzco to Aquas Calientes.
Some people choose to spend the night at Ollantaytambo instead of Cuzco, and in hindsight this is not a bad option at all. For one, you don't need to worry about the altitude sickness that Cuzco puts you through, and for another, Ollantaytambo is a really cute little town to stay.
There is a square right in the center of the City, and it's the prettiest I've seen till date, marrying the bustle of a European old Town square, with the rustic feel of South America.
There are loads of places to eat around this square and we had dinner at this really cosy restaurant called Quinua.
Aquas Calientes
The base town of Machu Picchu serving the only purpose of visiting the famed Incan hideout.
There are loads of quirky bars, Mapacho being the most popular of them, for travelers to chill.
The food scene is not that good though, quite a disappointment for an out and out tourist town.
Most people land here late evening to just spend the night before making it early morning to Machu Picchu.
The buses to Machu Picchu start at 5:30am and the queues start forming from 5am itself. We got into the line only at 5:30, and finally boarded the bus only at 6:20, by when the first train from Ollantaytambo had landed. So we barely benefited from the over night stay at Aquas Calientes, and could have stayed at Ollantaytambo itself. Thankfully we made it to the top before the sun peeked out from the mountains, and spending the night at Aquas Calientes is recommended if you want to be certain of catching the incredible sunrise.
The accommodations all around the town are tailor made for just this purpose as well. An account of the hotel we stayed can be found here:
Sacred Valley Tour:
Taray - Quick photo spot town offering a panaromic view of the river and mountains.
Pizac - Picturesque mountain terrace cultivation against the backdrop of a fort/temple built to protect the town of Cuzco in the 15th century.
Lamay - Famous for guinea pigs known as Cuy in South America. There are people standing on the road with a full guinea pig skewered and inviting passerbys in for a meal.
Yucay - Vast fields of the plump corn that tastes like pop corn even in it's raw form surround this little town.
Moray - The best of the Inca terrace farms. These are huge concentric circles built in a manner that there's a temperature difference of 15 degrees between the top and bottom layers. Built in between the mountains in such a way that even the sunlight is played around with. So different crops basis sunlight, water and temperature are grown within one plot of land using this terrace mode of cultivation.
Chinchero - A beautiful little town with one church with the weirdest depictions of Christianity given the influence of Incan culture adding to the Christan religion. Also the best place to do some shopping since the Alpaca wool clothes are the cheapest we found among all the places visited.
Urubamba - Though the name of the river that runs all through Peru, there's one town also by this name where there's a really good restaurant to lunch called Alhambra.
Iquitos
Is a city that cannot be accessed by road from the rest of Peru. Only boat via the Amazon, and flights can bring you to Iquitos.
Flights are an amazing way to see the muddy Amazon meandering thought think jungle foliage from the sky.
The Amazon River is distinctly muddy because of the silt it picks from the Andean mountains it originates from. There are places where the Amazon meets other rivers like the Napo river where the difference in water colour is clearly visibility.
There are options to either stay in a jungle lodge or do a cruise down the Amazon. While cruising is always a big tick on the bucket list, it’s usually not worth the money as there are a lot more things to do in the jungle lodge, which itself is pretty expensive to start with.
Camu Camu is a local fruit in the Amazon which has 14 times the vitamin c of a regular lemon, and is incredibly tasty, especially when induced in cocktails like Margarita’s and Mohito’s.
Iquitos is a fairly big city with 1mn people across 72 different tribes.
Pucalpa is the only other big city of the Peruvian Amazon, and it's 300km further into the jungle with no access by air, making Iquitos the only city one can fly into to see the Amazon.
The staple food is fish (Paiche being the most popular is a fish that can weigh up to 300kgs, Dorado and over 40 varieties of Cat fish are the other common ones), banana (there are 22 varieties, of which the tiny plantain is the most common) and chicken.
There is a dish called Juane which is the most popular dish of Iquitos, and it's made of rice, chicken, Olive and some herbs wrapped in a leaf and cooked for an hour.
The other popular dish is Tacacho, which is meat stuffed in potatoes and fried.
The city came into existence in 1870s during the Rubber Boom given the number of rubber trees here. But after they were are felled, the industry collapsed in 1910.
The main industries of Iquitos now are Oil, Lumber and Eco-Tourism.
Ceiba Tops Lodge where we stayed is named after a 300 year old tree called Ceiba (Kay-Pak in Indian) that looks straight out of the mother tree in Avatar.
Such trees are rare in the Amazon, so close to the river at least, given the demand in the big Lumber industry of Iquitos.
The only reason this one tree has survived is because it's now private property of the Lodge.
The Ceiba Tops Lodge is also known to be the only resort in the Peruvian Amazon to have hot water, WiFi and AC, since these things we take for granted are actually quite rare in the Amazon.
What is more easy to find in the Amazon resorts are snakes and spiders, and we found a Boa and 2 Tarantula's just outside some of the lodges.
Apart from just the facilities offered by Ceiba Tops, another amazing thing about the resort is the quality of food prepared. The fish in banana leaf, grilled chicken, tapioca with spicy salad, were some of our favorite dishes.
Most people who work in resorts like Ceiba Tops are called Mestos, which means cross breeds between Indians and Spanish. Some speak decent English and make excellent guides to jungle seeking travelers.
There are numerous activities organised by the resort, like night walking where you can watch various types of frogs and even the occasional caiman, canopy walkway which is one of the worlds highest walkways in the world, pink dolphin watching, and the best activity of all, piranha fishing.
La Paz
Very similar to Cuzco in the sense of being a high altitude hill town with thin air. Also has the vast expanses of brick houses just like Cuzco. The only difference being La Paz is a lot more crowded, smelly and congested with traffic.
One area where La Paz scores above Cuzco is in drinking. The local beer of Bolivia called Huari is much better than the local beer of Peru called Cusqueña. The national drink of Peru, the Pisco Sour is just too strong with its tequila like base, while the equivalent national drink of Bolivia is the Singania Sour that tastes a whole lot better.
Cable cars in the city are not just a tourist attraction, but serves effectively as an alternate and efficient mode of transport which some people say is like a metro in the sky.
People in La Paz don't believe in the concept of super markets here, and the few that exist just serve high end imported products. Most of the markets exist as Kioscos, or small street shops.
The city is bustling. Streets were crowded even at 11 in the night, and in tourist spots like St. Francis church, there are live performances well into the middle of the night.
Cholita wrestling happens on Thursday and Sunday evenings, and is a very entertaining live WWF with lots of fun and action with a snapshot that can be seen here.
Walking around the city of La Paz is not very pleasant, and finding these restaurants were quite a task:
The overall Food scene is not as great as Peru, and Red Cap tours organises a Foodie tour to showcase the best of that La Paz has to offer, which is worthwhile doing to experience the culinary of Bolivia, which includes visits to a Casera (one dedicated person from who customers buy their produce), but it just doesn't leave you as satisfied as Peru:
Uyuni
There are 2 ways to travel from La Paz to Uyuni. The discount option and the premium option.
The discount option involves overnight bus from La Paz to Uyuni, starting the tour as soon as you reach Uyuni in the morning, and overnight bus back. This way there is no accommodation cost for 2 nights, inexpensive travel by bus (which is a 12 hour travel but apparently pretty comfortable), and also the option to choose cheaper full day tour operators.
The premium option is to fly in from La Paz to Uyuni, stay in the Salt Hotel, and fly back the next day. The flights operate for the sole purpose of the salt lake tourism and are hence really expensive. Salt Hotels are just 3 for the entire city, and they charge a bomb as well.
There is a huge difference in price therefore between the premium and discount option, and it's the premium charged for the convenience offered. Purely individual choice.
We took the premium option as a holiday just doesn't feel like one unless there is a lot of leisure involved, and though it felt expensive, the money seemed worth it at the end.
Luna Salada hotel where we stayed was by far one of the best hotels to stay in. Not only is the theme of building the entire hotel out of salt fascinating, but the food and service offered is incredible.
The hotel staff picked us seamlessly from the tiny Uyuni airport, gave us an early check in at 10am itself, arranged jackets and blankets for us for the stargazing tour, and organized one of the best salt lake and stargazing tour we could have hoped for.
The salt lake tour covered the Colchani salt mines, Dakar race track, the first salt hotel to be built that is now just a museum as it wasn't possible to maintain the sanitation at the hotel, the cactus Oasis, and finally the salt lake itself, both a dry and wet version, from where we could take a lot of perspective photos that are popular here, but also witness the best ever sunset that the staff organised by setting up tables and chairs on the wet salt lake and serving wine and snacks as we soaked in the beauty of Uyuni.
While the overall service from the hotel was extremely hospitable, the food was something else altogether. The grilled chicken with potatoes were incredible. Something about the salt, or the actual potato itself made the dish really tasty. The trout was also fresh and delicious. There are lots of fresh fruits offered here, which is incredible given this place is in the middle of nowhere.
A review of this hotel can be found here.
