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I lived/volunteered in a small mountain town in Peru (Ayacucho) for about three months these holidays, so I got to see a bit of the country. My views are probably a bit different because I lived there, but, I'd highly recommend skipping the Nazca lines and spending less time in Lima in favor of trekking the Colca Canyon in Arequipa, it's a very very very cool place. (The second deepest canyon in the world I think.) Arequipa is only a few hours bus from Puno. Whereas seeing the lines is expensive, you go up in a little plane which a lot of folks get quite sick in, and I didn't think it was particularly thrilling. Also, don't do an overnight tour of the floating islands - Lake Titicaca is really beautiful but the islands (uros especially) are very exploitative and touristy, it's not a very 'authentic' experience staying on the islands for any length of time. I think there were better islands on the Bolivian side of the lake but I'm not sure if you'd have time for that - Copacabana is a lot nicer place than Puno though. And watch how much you spend in Aguas Calientes - it's a real tourist trap  I don't know if two weeks is enough time for this though - I can't really judge from my experiences because I saw these things over the period of a few months and had a pretty lax attitude towards travelling, taking night buses to save money etc. I'm guessing you'd fly back to Lima from wherever you finish up?
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Feb 23, 2009 22:52
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 22:23 |
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I did that route a couple of times, I lived in Ayacucho for two months and would definitely recommend spending a day or two there - just to hang out and experience a nice little peruvian town for a day or two, as opposed to the hustle and bustle of cusco or arequipa. There's some ruins called Wari an hour or two away by a collectivo, though in my time living there I never bothered to visit them so I can't really offer any advice on that. Anyway, the bus from Lima - Cusco takes anywhere from a day and a half, to three days depending on how you want to do it. The best bus from Lima - Ayacucho is a company called "Ayacucho express", which is locally owned and cheap too - 25 soles for semi-cama, and 40 soles for cama. The trip is about ten hours. Then from Ayacucho - Cusco it's a 24 hour trip. The bus leaves Ayacucho at either about 6.30pm or 6.30am, and the best company is called Celtour on passaje caceres (that's the name of the street.) Across the road is Expreso los chankas, but their buses were pretty loving awful. You should be able to haggle them down to 55 soles for ayacucho - cusco, but make sure the guy gives you the ticket for both ayacucho-Andahuaylas and Andahuaylas-cusco, because the bus stops in the middle for an hour or two. You could stay in Andahuaylas for a day if you like, but it's a bit of a shithole and I wouldn't recommend it. I think the night bus from Ayacucho is the way to go, because the first half of the road is pretty dodgy (think cliffs with no barriers, dirt tracks through forests etc) and I didn't want to look out the window at that. Then from Andahuaylas in the morning you start out going through some nice forests, then through a few really beautiful canyons and mountain ranges to Cusco, arriving in the evening so you can see all the lights of the city spread out all over the city, it's really nice. Anyway I'd go this way if I were you, the 12 hours from Ayacucho-Andahuaylas are horrible but you'll have a cool story to tell your friends about dodgy Peruvian bus rides and see some cool stuff on the way.
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Mar 3, 2009 07:23
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Yeah, you can get up to around 700 at a time I think, from the atms of local banks, just make sure the atm has the visa logo (or whichever credit card you use.) There's smaller atms though called "Global net" or something like that, they're yellow and I think are made to appeal to tourists but have smaller limits and cost more for transactions.
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Mar 3, 2009 20:10
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You'll be fine on the bus. As for flights - I got mine a week or two before I'd be flying because I didn't want to be stuck into 'having' to be somewhere by a certain date because I had a flight to catch, but I don't think it'd be any more expensive than buying them long before. As for the type of tourist? it depends on where you are. I didn't see many Americans outside of the main cities like Cuzco/Lima/La Paz etc. Mainly I found myself hanging out with english/french speaking Europeans and the odd australian or two. Cuzco though I found was full of drunk British people for some reason. Noir desir fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Mar 21, 2009 |
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Mar 21, 2009 04:24
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ja raul posted:Thanks, alright a few more general travel questions. Your electronics should be fine, I didn't have any problems nor meet anybody who did. Don't forget your adapter plug for power though! A multi-board type thing can be useful too, sometimes in the airports there's few power points near places you can comfortably sleep or wait, so it's nice to be able to charge your ipod and sleep while somebody else can use their laptop or whatever with the same socket.  Funnily enough on that street there were three 'internet cafes' (little shops with 2 or 3 computers) where I got the fastest speeds during my trip, and only cost 1 sol/hour! Even then, 'fast' isn't 15 mb/s, it's loading facebook or a news site without going half crazy waiting for the page to load. I found uploading photos onto facebook a pain wherever I went though - often the connection would time out after uploading for 10 or 15 minutes, so doing this when you're hungover and don't mind zoning out looking at a computer for a while is generally what I did :P As for cellphones, I brought my phone from home and bought a Claro simcard for 15 soles - you need a dual or tri-band phone for this to work though. If you don't have a phone that can accept the simcard, you can buy a phone in Peru for about 70 soles from an official Claro vendor. I didn't find myself using a phone much though, I just facebooked people I met to set up when to meet etc. Or there are people on street corners in flourescent jackets yelling 'llama' who will hire their phones for 0.50 sol/minute. As for dodgy buses? The only dodgy bus encounter I had was violently throwing up my lunch into a sink in the bus station in Cuzco fifteen minutes before leaving on a 26 hour trip - this was the first time I got food poisoning after three months! There was this as well though  That's a bus looking a bit worse for wear after breaking down about fourteen hours into a trip! Fortunately it was only an hour away from another depot for that company so we weren't stuck there, and miss a flight or anything. You just have to be a bit wary with scheduling flights without relying too much on the bus to be on time - a friend missed her flight to Buenos Aires because there had been a landslide, and I met some other Kiwis who had been delayed because their bus driver was arrested after trying to smuggle shoes over the Bolivian border! The police took all the panels of the bus and it was full of black market shoes! I didn't have any negative experiences with police either - you'll probably only ever talk to them at the airport or when they come on the bus to check passports/identity cards. They do carry ak47s/big shotguns though which I found a little freaky coming from a country where police are unarmed. Have fun
Noir desir fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Mar 22, 2009 |
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Mar 22, 2009 09:03
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Mango Polo posted:Only one week until I'm off to Peru Hey there, sorry, I forgot about this post! If you happen to check this thread before you leave/when you're there, my last piece of advice would be to recommend this hostel for staying in Arequipa/doing the Colca Canyon. My Peruvian (spanish,english,french speaking) friend Luy I did volunteer work with owns it, he's a really cool dude who has also worked as a guide in Colca Canyon for ten years or so.
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Apr 14, 2009 12:21
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DustingDuvet posted:The girls in Argentina are some of the most beautiful but are hands down the most difficult to approach anywhere I have been in the world. In Brazil the girls are very easy to approach and kissing a girl in a club is really easy. But I never went out in Sao Paulo and heard its not as liberal as in other cities. Though Sao Paulo is supposed to have some of the best nightlife in the world. I'd definitely agree with you here. I stayed in Buenos Aires for a little while, then funnily enough for a week in Sao Paulo with a girl I met clubbing in B.A, lol. There's some really cool places in Sao Paulo like Ibirapuera park, liberdade, paulista avenue, Samba is great fun etc. The best of the nightlife there is just insane (insanely expensive as well, but it's worth it) and girls are a lot more friendly/hot and easy to approach than other places I'd been. 'The beach' is like a five hour drive away though. I preferred Buenos Aires though because it's a lot safer, I enjoyed the normal everyday nightlife buzz more and as it's a smaller city it's easier to get around and you can get to know it quicker. If it were between the two cities I'd pick Buenos Aires, I'd go there when I go back to South America over Sao Paulo. Spanish or Portugese is an important question as well though. I couldn't stand Portugese which would factor into my decision.
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Jun 4, 2009 08:06
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Hadlock posted:
Heh, I read this post and had to go find my old lonely planet and found so many scribbles, pictures, notes, old tickets etc in there that brought back so many good memories. I'd recommend the South America on a Shoestring one as opposed to the rough guide or whatever the other company is, it's really good, the only downside is that they're loving massive. Like, actually colossal. If you're taking a backpack instead of a bigger hiking pack or whatever it'll end up being the biggest thing in your luggage which can be pretty lovely, me and my friend took turns carrying the thing. The prices in there are usually a pretty close estimate but not exact, it's also a good idea to cross-check their recommended places to stay on hostelworld as well if you have the time, I ended up stayed in a few pretty lovely/downright weird guesthouses that my book said were 'vibrant' and had a 'great party atmosphere' etc
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Mar 9, 2010 22:40
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Too Fresh posted:~bump from March, what's up SA SA crew?~ If you're from nz go to kathmandu or whatever and buy one of the standard european power plug things, they'll fit everything in s/america and cost like $30 less than the bullshit universal ones
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Apr 19, 2010 05:55
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NZAmoeba posted:Is it mostly euro? Everything I was looking at said it would be both euro/usa, but didn't really give a ratio. I'm doing Peru/Bolivia/Brazil. I just brought a Euro one when I did peru/bolivia/brazil/argentina and it worked out fine. There were only a couple of really old buildings we stayed in where they only had the usa one but then I just borrowed somebody elses or ended up not having to charge anything anyway. My friend bought one of those universal adapter things to take from home but it was quite bulky and poorly made & ended up getting broken and thrown away pretty quick, lol.
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Apr 19, 2010 08:44
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 22:23 |
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Yeah, I wasn't really impressed by La Paz either to be honest, though it sounds like I had a better time than you did DustingDuvet. We lucked out & managed to stay with a family friend - I didn't realize until afterwards that they were seriously loving loaded, by local standards. Apparently Santa Cruz is quite nice though, I was disappointed not to have had the chance to check it out. Interesting things that happened there: -Our 'guide' when mountain biking was a coke addict who'd quit rehab the week before & it was his first day on the job. His 'experience' didn't really count for much when my friend fell over & broke his collar bone, but hotboxing the van driving back up the death road with the French dudes who were with us was pretty sweet. - Getting chased out of a shop by a butcher holding a meatcleaver after refusing to pay 300 bolivianos (~$40 USD) for about 250 grams of ham. - Our bus going back to Peru from La Paz got stopped at the border, and ripped apart by customs, revealing literally thousands of pairs of fake shoes in the frame of the bus that somebody was trying to smuggle to Cuzco/wherever.
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Oct 5, 2010 03:10
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