Advice on Traveling to Peru

Now that I have recapped our entire trip – sorry for putting you through that, but it was amazing for me to relive it! – I want to give some quick tips on how to make the most out of your trip :-)

~ Book your trip as early in advance as possible. We bought our plane tickets in April for our trip in July, the tickets were much more expensive than when we looked at prices in December and January. We ended up getting booking the Salkantay Trek and the airfare through

~ We booked our airfare and our Salkantay Trek through STA Travel. They were great to work with and offered us the best deal!

~ STA Travel works with Bamba Experience to book their Salkanta Trek. The office is located in the Milhouse Backpackers & Hotel - Calle Quera 270, Cusco, Peru (a place you can stay as well, it seemed to be a young backpackers kind of spot, a bit loud but there were always people around)

~ On the trek we were asked to give tips to the cooks, the porters and the guides. Bring enough cash for that as well as incidentals. Along the trek there are a lot of little stops to buy water, snacks and toilet paper.

~ Have toilet paper with you at.all.times! And don’t skimp on the hand sanitizer!

~ Update on the toilets: beware that the toilets rarely have toilet seats let alone toilet paper. Some you even have to manually flush!

~ Don’t drink the tap water if it hasn’t been boiled. I was told not to even brush my teeth with tap water. I was very careful and still, unfortunately, got food poisoning.

~ On that note…don’t eat in the Market…enough said…

~ I was told that most places accepted credit cards, we found that that was typically not the case: most places did not accept credit card. Bring enough Peruvian Nuevo Sol and also know that a lot of places accept American dollars too.

~ Buy something alpaca! I promise you would love it! And don't fear the "baby alpaca" labels - that just means that the alpaca has never been sheared before! :-) 

~ When at Machupicchu, stamp your passport!

Our trip to Peru was amazing. We saw beautiful sites, met fantastic people and made lifetime memories!