Feedback on Peru Itinerary

I am glad we went up to MP twice, once to visit the urban areas and learn about it. Our second visit was just to marvel at the grandeur and the view.

I'd also want that second visit as insurance for a clear view.

Should we take the time to visit Machu Picchu a second time?

Yes, absolutely. I would have gone a third and fourth time if I had been able to.

I didn't go to Arequipa but your plan to rest there is a good one. The elevation is moderate and you'll be tired from your travels.

I'd be a bit worried about your last day plan to fly to Lima and then home that same day. Lima is a giant, spread out city. The airport is a solid 45-90 minutes drive to the city center (depending on traffic, which is HORRIBLE). You have zero room for error if your flight from Cusco is delayed or canceled (that happened to me) or there are issues with Lima airport (can be foggy/delays). I myself would fly to Lima the day before your flight to the US. I also had a late night departure and paid for two nights of hotel in Lima so I didn't have to check out in the morning. It was nice to keep my bags in the room, do some sightseeing, and clean up and pack before a long overnight flight.

We didn't hike the trail, but we still visited MP twice, and we're glad we did. We visited the citadel the first afternoon. Most people try to go in the morning, many hoping to see the sunrise. However, it's not always clear early in the morning. We thought going later in the afternoon was perfect. Our entry was at 2 pm, and we stayed until closing. It was much less crowded after about 3 pm. Also, we were there for golden hour and the beginning of sunset.

We went early the next morning (but not sunrise early) and walked to the Sun Gate. The ruins were shrouded in cloud and fog early on, and this didn't clear until a few hours after sunrise, anyway. We liked having the different views of the citadel on this second day.

Here is my trip report, in case there might be something in it that's helpful to you. Enjoy your planning.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/beyond-europe/peru-mini-trip-report

Thanks all! Appreciate the confirmation that returning to Machu Picchu is a solid plan, and that an afternoon visit may be more enjoyable than a morning visit. I’ve reached out to the tour operator we are planning to go with to see if we might be able to return to MP after our group lunch that same day. We will want to catch their group return to Cusco the next day so could only do a morning MP visit the next day.

Also, CL, good point on the return flights. I’ll do some more thinking on that arrangement.

BB, thanks for sharing your trip report.

Will look for my trip report.

Arequipa was disappointing to us, planned on 3 nights but spent a half day rejiggering buses and accommodation to get out after 2 nights. The Convent is a great attraction, a highlight of Peru, a half day, the rest of the city is high end boutiques and restaurants. If you go stay north of the square, it’s kinda gross south of there.

Machu Picchu: Peru is a special country and has oodles to see. The problem with a second visit is it displaces equally worthy things. MP is also crowded as all get out. I believe ticket policy has changed since BB’s visit so it’s now hourly admission and chockerblock dawn till dusk. Sorry, the window for a great MP visit has probably closed forever (I missed it too).

Your last hours in Lima make no sense, it’s too congested to get to anything interesting from the airport and the airport area is dumpy, identical to Mexico City’s situation if you know it. If you are flying Delta you can codeshare with LATAM to/from Cusco or Arequipa on one ticket and skip Lima (although maybe you are doing that, if do reduce the connection time and skip Lima).

Adding: My 3 “everything” countries, those that have it all (great cuisine, great scenery, friendly and polite people, music, art, culture, history, completely safe for tourists in tourist areas) are Japan, Mexico, and Peru.

Edit: Adding trip report
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/peru-trip-report-september-2024

Pay special attention to my Pisac section, I preferred it to MP (but doing the through hike).

Hi Julie,
A definite yes to doing at least two different Machu Picchu routes. I went about a month ago for the first time (I added a trip report) and we did 3B in the afternoon and 2B the next morning at 6am. The 6am one had much better weather and it was amazing to be there with so few people. Any time you go, you never know what the weather will be like, and we liked the different perspectives the two routes gave us, even though there is overlap.

Arequipa is charming and worth a few nights. I don't think it's a "must see" but the center area and the Plaza are quite nice and a great example of colonial architecture.

I would think about maybe just day-tripping to Pisac from Cusco, and head straight to Ollantaytambo. The Pisac ruins were the least interesting of the ones we saw and we didn't like the town as well as we liked Ollantaytambo. I would also strongly suggest adding at least a night in Cusco. It's big, there's a lot to see, and it was one of my favorite places we've been in Peru (I live in Lima, FYI). We had three nights in Cusco during our Sacred Valley trip, and we all agreed we needed one or two more.

Don't fly out of Cusco then from Lima the same day. Lima traffic can be horrific and Cusco flights are known to be cancelled and delayed. Lima has an amazing restaurants, and it's a great place to live, but there's not a lot to see from a tourist perspective. The airport is in Callao, which is not a safe area- it's one of the most dangerous areas in Lima- and the tourist center is a 45 minute plus drive, depending on traffic. I'd just leave from Cusco. Do keep it last, though, to give yourself time to acclimate to the elevation.

Though I've visited Peru ten times over the past two decades (obviously I think it's a great country to see), I'm not going to tweak your proposed itinerary any further. It's a pretty standard tourist itinerary, and I'm sure it will be fine if you follow it as written -- though I will commend you for including Arequipa, which not all tourists do.

I was impressed to see CL’s advice (and Coffee Girl's affirmation) about leaving for Lima a day before your final flight back home, for it's basically the same advice I've given on travel forums myself. Though chances are good that your final flight from Cusco to Lima will go as scheduled, long delays, and even cancellations, do happen, mainly because of bad weather in the high mountains, and so flying back to Lima one or two days before your flight back home is usually worth considering. Example: on one of my visits, when my flight back home left on a Saturday, I arranged to fly from Huaraz back to Lima the preceding Thursday, leaving Friday as something of a full "grace" or "buffer" day between flights. And in fact that Thursday flight back to Lima was cancelled for the day -- but thanks to my prudence, the next day, Friday, I was able to fly back to Lima and thus make that Saturday flight home. (Not that I was all that anxious to return home after another great Peru trip, but rescheduling long flights can be an expensive nuisance.)

Now I’m sure that the opinions offered in the preceding comments are all personally honest; but in fairness to Peru, I feel I should add the following two points:

[1] I found Arequipa to be a great Spanish-colonial city, one where I gladly stayed three full days (without even going to the Colca Canyon, justly popular as it is.). Now my visit was back in 2009, and I can allow for the possibility that things may have changed since then, though I will add that over on another Peru forum (TripAdvisor) there is a regular respondent, something of a Latin America expert, who has been to Arequipa more recently and still recommends it as fondly as I do. I'll just add that at the time of my visit, the area south of the main plaza did seem a little plainer than the rest of the city center, but nothing worse.

[2] Passing through Lima International on so many trips, I have never found it to as bad as implied in a response above , though I would say that while there's nothing really wrong with it, it may not be the most visually elegant of airports. (I am referring to the "old" Lima airport, which I think is still functioning, even though a newer addition, which I haven't been through yet, has recently opened. And incidentally, I have been through some truly palatial-looking airports, so I can make comparisons.) However, while the Lima airport itself is safe (and so is the taxi ride into the city), the area surrounding the airport may in fact be closer to what one might call "dumpy." Except for the airport hotel, and the near-by Holiday Inn, I wouldn't consider lodgings in that neighborhood. Also, a fun fact: while many international airports are named after heads of state, generals, or national celebrities, Lima's may be one of just a few named after a real aviation pioneer -- in this case Jorge Chavez.

Toby, was there anything in particular that made Arequipa disappointing to you? Do you think it was more of the timing of where it fell in your trip or you just didn't personally jive with the city? Or expectations didn't meet reality? I had that happen on our first trip to Spain - didn't like Sevilla as much as I thought I would and ended up loving Granada (and when we went Granada was not nearly as well-loved as Sevilla).

Machu Picchu: I did find out today from our tour operator that we will have the opportunity to either stay for an unguided 10:00am Circuit 2 tour that morning after we finish our guided Circuit 1 and 3 tours, or we can go up Huayna Picchu. If we do this instead, we could think about saving that night in Aguas Calientes and putting it towards somewhere else.

Lima: I was honestly thinking we could just fly from Cusco to Lima mid-day and not even go into the city. They have sleeping pods and showers in the airport (great option to have!). I have read that it is less likely to have weather cancellations in September, but I did not realize weather cancellations were as common in general as it sounds like they are there. Since we don't have flights booked yet, I am going to look into booking this leg of our trip as one complete ticket rom Cusco back to the USA (instead of separate tickets) so there would be some obligation for the airline to get us on another flight if something were to go wrong. No matter what, it sounds like we need to reconsider this portion - thanks for the great advice!

I am very interested in the hike with the ruins at Pisac - I was hoping that they would be more enjoyable and intimate with being more off the beaten path.

Coffee Girl, what time of year did you go to MP? Thanks for the point of view on staying in Pisac. I had been thinking a night there might be well spent but there is also something nice about packing/unpacking fewer times on a trip. Why about Ollantaytambo made you like it more than Pisac? As currently planned, we will have 4 nights in Cusco. If we drop the night in Aguas Calientes, we could spend another night in Cusco (the transit is part of the package from our Inca Trail operator). Did you have any other ruins that you would recommend in lieu of those at Pisac?

Faedus, you must love Peru with so many return trips there! It is our first visit to Peru and it is very difficult trying to narrow down the places to see. I'm glad to hear you really enjoy Arequipa - what are some of your favorite things about the city? And what are some of your favorite things to do there? I have seen a lot of feedback from other travelers that it is their favorite city in Peru. I was hoping that Arequipa might be a nice contrast to some of the other places that we will be visiting. I had also thought about taking a cooking class while there - the ones offered by Peruvian Flavor are incredibly well reviewed and sound fun and tasty. I've read that the food scene is great in Arequipa in general and since we won't have any time in Lima as currently planned, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to eat some good food there.

I've been playing around with our itinerary and am considering trading the day hike to Humantay Lake (or possibly 7 Lagunas Ausangate) for an extra day at the front end of our trip to have the time to visit Colca Canyon. With either option, we will be spending a similar amount of time in a tour vehicle to get to either destination. I am thinking that Colca Canyon with its condors would be more of a unique experience than hiking to alpine lakes (albeit with stunning scenery).

Thank you so much for the ideas and feedback - it is very appreciated!

I know my trip report was long but do read the Pisac section and about hiring a driver for the day. The upper Pisac ruins aren’t so very much and very crowded but the crowds thin out quickly hiking south. The Taxidatum website is very handy for you for Pisac and also for Ollantaytambo.

Arequipa: I don’t see much here to do other than the convent. We even had a guidebook that brought us into hidden historic courtyards and put effort into it, aside from the convent it’s a thin destination, mostly a hang out place after backpacking overland from Lima or Chile. There are high end shops here. There are houses to tour out of center but we didn’t do anything out of walking distance. There are way more colonial buildings in Cusco over Arequipa. Perhaps the more important question is what do people do there after seeing the convent? The cathedral on the main plaza is fairly ugly inside, and not so great outside either.

We’ve visited Peru twice in the last year as our son was in the Peace Corps in Northern Peru.

Last December we did the typical tourist swing - Lima and Cusco and Machu Picchu, much like you have planned. My niece spent a day traveling to the rainbow mountain from Cusco and loved it - we were tired of so much van time and didn’t go.

Last summer we did a less typical trip which included Cajamarca (near where our son was) and then Arequipa and Culca Canyon, which we loved. In addition to the convent and the beautiful volcano views and the cathedral, we would highly recommend the museum where Juanita is. Here’s a link - https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g294313-d318518-Reviews-Museo_Santuarios_Andinos-Arequipa_Arequipa_Region.html.

We also spent a few days on the coast south of Lima and did sand dunes by jeep and the “poor man’s” Galapagos. We stayed in Paracas.

I would recommend both Arequipa and Culca Canyon.