Southern Peru Adventure

Peru | Jul 14 - Jul 24, 2018

Or southern Peru trip was wonderful. The petroglyph field of Toro Muerto was amazing and the weather for the trip could not have been better. Our favorite places were the area surrounding Colca canyon (such as Sumbay Caves, Mollenpunko Caves, the viewpoint of the volcanoes, the reserve with the wild vicuñas and all the wildlife, including the wild flamingos) and the canyon itself with the Andean condors. Another favorite was Puerto Inca, staying at the hotel with the private beach surrounded by beautiful cliffs and lots of Inca and pre-Inca ruins. Our driver, Luis, did a wonderful job driving and taking care of the car and our guide, Alberto, picked fun places to break up the trip, such as olive stands and small churches. Our guide did seem more interested and engaged in the history around Arequipa and Colca Canyon. Towards the end of the trip he was more interested in his phone than the places or sites so we would explore the areas on our own mostly. Alberto did, through a friend, arrange a last minute change for us in our itinerary as we did decide to fly over the Nazca lines, which was very nice of him to offer to do so. Our guide for Lima, Narda, did an excellent job explaining the history, cultures, trends and politics of all of Peru and was very knowledgable on every subject. She did an amazing job and the driver, Juan Carlos, was excellent and very kind. Narda also pegged all of the food we would like to try and brought us to small food markets and food fairs that were amazing. Our itinerary was full of things to see and fairly fast paced so we did see a lot and most of what was on the itinerary. Clara did a good job arranging the trip at the last minute for us and there was only one miscommunication between us that was ironed out fine in the end. She fit in everything that I wanted to see and we ended up seeing almost all of it. There were some delays in communication over Kim-Kim but I realize that I would also go dark for periods when planning this trip because I was traveling during the time. Recommend the dinosaur footprints attraction more for children - but I am from an area with many dinosaur footprints so it is not such a novelty for me. It would have been nice to have more information about who the guides and drivers would be and how the transfers between places would happen but I also realize that I did not expressly ask for this information.