We have finalized our itinerary to Peru. Creating the itinerary for this trip was difficult. Air travel is available to most of the areas that you want to visit. However, it seems difficult to make flights that have easy connections. This means flying into either Lima or Cuzco, then spend the night to take another flight the next morning. On my itinerary you will see a few one night stays. But given the issues I think the itinerary turned out pretty well.
One thing about traveling to South America. It is a long distance away. From San Francisco, Lima is 4500 miles away. By comparison, Paris is 5500 miles away. When you fly to Paris you can leave in the afternoon and arrive in the morning. You miss a lot of sleep because of the time change, but it still works out OK. The time change to Peru is not as dramatic, only 2 hours during US daylight savings time, the same time zone as Chicago. But that means you leave for Peru in the morning and arrive in the middle of the night. Or do as we will and leave in the middle of the night and arrive early evening.
There are other issues that make the itinerary challenging. You need to be sensitive to the altitude in the Andes. You want to make sure that when you first get into the Andes you can take it easy and acclimate. We could have traveled 15 hours to get to Lima at midnight, got on a connection to Cuzco at 6:00am and began our first tour in the Andes that morning. That may be efficient, but we could have easily become ill. So we are sleeping in Lima and then a night in Puno before heading out on an all day tour.
Then there are activities that you want to put into the schedule that only occur on particular days. The popular Pisac market is held only on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Some of the Jungle lodges will only depart on particular days. And of course there are personal constraints. When you can go and for how long?
| So here is the final itinerary: Peru Trip May. 21 - Jun. 2 Summary | |
| Agenda | Overnight |
| 5/21 (Thu) Leave SFO (1:25am) Arrive LIM (7:10pm) | Lima |
| 5/22 (Fri) Travel to Puno (Fly) | Puno |
| 5/23 (Sat) Lake Titicaca | Puno |
| 5/24 (Sun) Travel to Cuzco (Bus) | Cuzco |
| 5/25 (Mon) Travel to Machu Picchu (Train) | Aguas Calientes |
| 5/26 (Tue) Travel to Cuzco (Train) | Cuzco |
| 5/27 (Wed) Travel to Amazon (Fly) | Manu |
| 5/28 (Thu) Amazon | Manu |
| 5/29 (Fri) Amazon | Manu |
| 5/30 (Sat) Travel to Cusco (Fly) | Cuzco |
| 5/31 (Sun) Cuzco | Cuzco |
| 6/1 (Mon) Cuzco | Cuzco |
| 6/2 (Tue) Travel to SFO | |
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