Andean Travel Experience

First of all, this our 2nd time to use KimKim for a trip. They certainly have made traveling more enjoyable, and in actuality, cost efficient!
We were working with Liz Karen for quite a while. She is knowledgeable about the various options for a Cusco trip which helped us make our decisions.
Since we started many months prior to traveling, we really appreciated Liz Karen’s patience and creativity. We end up with 9 iterations of our trip, and she helped with all the information we needed to have a good trip.
When we finally arrived, our in country help was Oscar! That guy is really patient, but I also think he knows how to build in the perfect amount of time for each of the outings. He kept us on pace, especially with our reserved luncheon at Ollytantambo and with the rather complicated 2 day trip for Machupicchu with buses and trains and other hotels, he made it easy. He really allowed us to enjoy ourselves and masterfully moved us around. To where we needed to go at what time we needed to be there.
We had a 6 day trip from USA, all in Cusco/Aguas Calientes area. With 11 people including 2 grandparents and 1 grandchild, the private tours and travel were of necessity, and here is where KimKim does so well. That’s the really service we appreciate because we get to enjoy the trip and the sights!
We stayed at Tika Wasi in the San Blas area of Cusco, which was a perfect funky hotel with nice courtyard area and the surrounding area is comfortable and plenty of food alternatives.
Definitely want to make sure you are acclimated to the altitude as not sure we could’ve done machupichu in the 1st couple days, pretty rough already.

Hotel Reviews

Pucara Machu Picchu Hotel

Can’t beat a hotel right downtown, such convenience.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Tika Wasi Casa Boutique

Cusco

Very nice comfortable boutique in San Blas. Breakfast was good, along with the courtyard area. No televisions in rooms, which is nice to have, but then again we were so tired that probably didn’t matter. The staff was friendly, knowledgeable about the area, and even helped me fix one of our luggage zippers!

Authenticity & Character

Location

Right at the edge of the area. Far enough away from noise and hustle, yet close enough that we could walk everywhere

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Explore Machu Picchu & Return to Cusco (Private Guided tour in Machu Picchu)

Peru

We simply travel to go find out about places, so we certainly got out fill of being in the area long enough, but then to add this really awe inspiring mountain top city basically in the middle of nowhere was simply breathtaking. Not to mention the climb up to go down to the part of the circuit 2A we went on. Oscar was helpful getting us around as he did all week.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private tour to The Sacred Valley: Maras, Moray & Pachamanca

Peru

Basically it was all about the Pachamama, as we are a family that loves to eat. Learning a bit more about the indigenous culture, in that setting at El Albergue was fantastic. The distillery and the coffee roasting facilities were a nice surprise.

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private tour to Pisac: Andean Animals

Cusco

This was pretty neat, and really helped us understand where we were geographically: very high up in the Andes! So awesome! Was cool to see the local animals and birds, and see the countryside.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private Half-Day Walking Tour: Sacsayhuaman, Cusco City & San Pedro Market

Cusco

This was basically filler and a get to know the area excursion. I think our group was too big to make it special, as no one paid much attention and went off on their own anyway.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Andriel was an amazing guide through the sacred valley.
I appreciate the KimKim team for organizing everything, booking all transportation, checking into our flights for us, etc. it made travel worry-free.
The itinerary was spot on.

It was a lot of travel to go back 500 years in history to Machu Picchu but I will never forget it.
I especially liked how knowledgeable our tour guide was of the history of Machu Picchu and was easily able to answer all of our detailed question
Booking me in the hotel on the square in Cusco was great as the view of the square ( spent hours people watching) and the Christ Statue glowing at night overlooking the city. Later touring Pukamoqo hill, a place that was already considered a spiritual site by the Inca civilization I was very interested in learning it was donated to the city in 1945 by Palestinian Arabs who migrated to this part of Peru as a refuge after the Second World War.
I loved the ancient Andean sacredness that was prevalent all around the country
Thanks for the opportunity to briefly experience the culture and want to go back for more in depth indigenous food and cooking classes.

LizKaren and Lizbeth were very responsive to all of our questions and I really appreciate this.

The trip was great and all encountered people - guides, drivers, hotel & restaurant staff were so kind, polite & professional. Nataly and Daniel were exceptional. At Novotel, Mayara (a hotel staff worker) was exceptional and made the hotel stay 5 star!

Overall, many of the days were too full and too long. The Lima tour day was too hurried to enjoy either the Larco or the historic old town. I recommend removing one of the 2 events. I would keep the cooking event.

I would recommend spending the night in Iquitos rather than the Lima airport hotel. It was a super long day and our night in the hotel was about 4 hours. Too short to really enjoy the first day with Nataly . Again, I would remove one of the stops between Cusco and the sacred valley lodge. (The fancy lunch dining was very nice but happened very late in the day and we were beyond hungry & tired). We started very early in Lima, and ended the day quite late at the very beautiful Arawana hotel. We all would have enjoyed more time to enjoy this place.

I would have liked 2 days in Agua Caliente to have time in the town and time to perhaps do a second hike in Machu Picchu. Again, we arrived late in Agua Caliente with an early start planned the following day.

Cusco was wonderful. The waking tour with Nataly was great and we did not take the rainbow mtn tour and our day staying back exploring Cusco on our own was nice.

It’s hard to know how much is too much and what to drop off the plan or whether to add days. But generally — making the days shorter so travelers can enjoy the evenings where they are would be better. 20 minutes in a museum or at a stop is like zero minutes in my opinion.

Additionally, it would be great to have dining recommendations close by especially in places where we have a short night.

Also providing tipping recommendations ahead of time would be beneficial. We spent a lot of time talking about who gets a tip and how much is appropriate.

Again, I did not do the planning coordination with Doug and KimKim, so I am not complaining. I am just saying that next time I will be more mindful of the tours/plans per day and lengths of the days along with how many nights per place.

I loved having the driver and guides , hotels and tours set up for just us 8 and would totally work with you on a different adventure. Peru is an amazing adventure!

The communication was difficult. Things needed to be repeated many times. I know that the 3 people that added on late did not help the matter at all. It was just very frustrating..
Getting all of the email and text notifications was overwhelming at times. That being said, however, our Machu Pichu guide (Javier) was fabulous, informative, helpful and just plain kind. Nataly on our other days was equally as wonderful. We felt that having those 2 as guides really made the trip remarkable.
With one of our people that was injured about a month ago, the long walks to transport and having to haul luggage up several flights of stairs was difficult.
Having the driver pick us up so late to get us to the airport was nerve wracking.
All in all it was a good trip!

Hotel Reviews

Holiday Inn Lima Airport

Lima

All the hotels were way better than anything I stay in. It would have been nice to have 3 to 4 star hotels and cut the cost of the trip down.

Authenticity & Character

Nice but nothing special

Location

Quick and easy from the airport

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Tariq Boutique hotel

Helpful staff, beautiful setting, great views,

Authenticity & Character

Adorable. Steps were difficult for some in our group to get up to the rooms and the location for car pickup/dropoff.

Location

While the location was beautiful, it was hard to get to and we needed to walk a fair distance from where the car dropped us off/picked us up.

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

El Albergue Ollantaytambo Boutique Hotel

Cusco

Wonderful rooms and great restaurant. Location was perfect for catching the train to Macchu Pichu.

Authenticity & Character

Gardens, trees growing through the kitchen.

Location

By the train station was wonderful. A little bit of a walk to get to the wandering party of town.. Lots and lots of tourists.

Staff

Unfortunately, I did not get his name,, but there was a gentleman at the front desk that was very helpful.

Cleanliness & Comfort

Flowers in the room were a nice touch, beds were comfortable.

Activity Reviews

Transfer to a Restaurant & San Francisco Catacombs

Peru

Private Half-Day Walking Tour: Sacsayhuaman, Cusco City & San Pedro Market

Cusco

Explore Machu Picchu: Observatory train to Machu Picchu SV

Peru

Private tour to the Sacred Valley: Hacienda lunch

Peru

Wow! The lunch was delicious, especially loved being told about the food that we were eating. The welcome drink? I could drink that all day. Being shown around the hacienda and learning about different aspects of how things work was fascinating. The ‘3 way crop’ (I’m pretty sure that was not what it was called). Seeing the guinea pigs and understanding how that works was quite interesting. I learned a lot about them that I did not know.

Quality of Experience

Great staff imparted knowledge to us.

Food

Beautiful presentation!

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Liz Karen was great in helping us plan our trip. She was patient and thorough throughout the process. She was open to feedback and adjustments in the schedule and got it to what was feasible for us.

Hotel Reviews

Casa Andina Premium Puno

Puno

Great experience here, no issues. Right on the lake and very quiet

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Jardines de Uyuni

Uyuni

Really great hotel. My only issue was that the bed was a full sized bed which was small for the two of us.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Hotel Presidente

La Paz

The hotel was okay. We faced the the Main Street so it was very loud. The window was single-paned so even when we closed it, you could hear everything happening on the street. We were supposed to stay here two nights but we found a different hotel instead.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

El Mapi by Inkaterra

Cusco

This hotel was also fine. Nothing exceptional about the room itself. The bed was comfortable and room was clean.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Casa Andina Premium Cusco

Cusco

Very nice hotel, clean, beautiful and great location

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Dazzler Miraflores by Wyndham

Lima

This hotel was fine. Nothing exceptional, needs some updates but the bed was comfortable, the room was spacious and quiet.

Authenticity & Character

It’s just kind of tired

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Shared Uros & Taquile Floating Islands tour

Puno

Very interesting

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Shared Uyuni Salt Flats tour

Uyuni

Incredible. This is was one of the coolest places I’ve ever seen.

Quality of Experience

All of it

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Briefing about your future tour/trek

Peru

N/A we decided to skip this and take a rest day

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private Half-Day Walking Tour: Sacsayhuaman, Cusco City & San Pedro Market

Cusco

It was really a good walking tour, we learned a lot during this tour.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

No

Transport

Explore Machu Picchu & Return to Cusco (Private Guided tour in Machu Picchu)

Peru

Our guide, Jacqueline, was great. She arrived early and got us there early and ahead of the crowds. Very knowledgeable

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Private tour to The Sacred Valley: Salt mines, Terraces & Pachamanca

Peru

Overall a good tour. Our guide, Juan De La Cruz, was good as was our driver. The only thing we didn’t like about this was the stop in Chincherra. This felt like a total tourist and we felt pressured to buy something (which we did). Didn’t love it

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Urban Kitchen Experience

Lima

We loved this experience. A fabulous experience and very fun.

Quality of Experience

Food

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport