15 nights in Peru.

Lima: We stayed with friends so life was really easy. Food: La Mar (amazing hip place... go for lunch and go hungry), Restaurant Huaca Pucllana (really nice for dinner), La Rosa Nautica. One night we went to Cala for drinks. It's a pretty hip lounge. For breakfast, we went to Tanta and San Antonio and they both had good food. See diego's notes for the rest of the details. 4 nights. You have to do min of 2 to get in and out. 4 was good. Getting around peru was really easy. We used LAN to fly around and you can buy your tickets online. It was a great airline.

Cusco: We stayed at the Monasterio. It was really nice. The food there was overpriced and not so great. We enjoyed eating at the restaurant in MAP and the Inka Grill. The fish was generally great. I really liked cusco.

Sacred Valley: We stayed in www.hotelsolyluna.com. The food at the hotel was really good. It was a mix of Peruvian and French food. Go to MP from here. The train ride is much shorter. We hiked up to Huayna Picchu when we were at Macchu Picchu. We went slow to enjoy it. It took 2 hours to go up and down. It was a nice hike.

Amazon: Manu is very remote and requires 5+ night stays. So we opted against that. There are lots of lodges in the Tambopata region. It's also not as crowded as the places near Iquitos. We stayed at Reserva Amazonica since they had a last minute special off their web page (I bought my own air ticket and saved a few hundred dollars). But Lake Sandoval Lodge also looked good. They have two types of tours: two half day and all day. We did two all day excursions and they are nicer for many reasons: less transfer time back and forth to the lodge, less people as most people opt for the half day tours, less older people. Overall, we had an amazing time. See videos/pictures here: http://www.rezab.com/2006_09_01_rezabe_archive.html.

We got really lucky with the weather thank to cold winds. The temperate was below 80 and not very humid. So it was very pleasant. But this is not typical.

Arequipa: We didn't have time to go to Colca as it would have been very rushed. The Santa Catalina Monastery is amazingly beautiful. One day is enough for this city and this was probably the one thing we could have cut from the trip.

-- DiegoValderrama - 16 Nov 2006
to top