Down to the Wire with Planning Peru

The bulk of our travel planning should have occurred in a different sequence and much earlier, but upon our return home from Europe in November we had additional travel and the holidays, then more travel.

In an ideal world, we would have identified Peru as a possible trip, research would have come first, followed by tour, hotel and airline bookings. 

However, in this case, we had flight credits from United Airlines, from when we opted to cruise home from Europe rather than fly (see ADVENTURE ONE OVERVIEW), with a July 2024 expiration date. Knowing we could spend as much or as little time as we desired beyond just hiking, I used our credits to book travel to Peru May 5-22 and figured we fill in the other activities as it got closer to our departure date. That was back in early November.

As noted in my March 2024 post Initial steps in planning Peru, we were committed and booked for our trek last November as well. So here it is April and I’m asking family and friends who previously visited Peru, what were your favorite places to see, adventures to experiences, meals to enjoy, since I knew we’d want a few days prior to the start of the hike in Cusco to acclimate to the elevation and probably time to explore Lima and other areas of Peru.

Once gathered, I researched what travel agencies recommended as part of their Peru travel packages. I especially liked the recommendations of AudleyTravel. I added all this content to our spreadsheet… and then read about each idea. We labeled each option on our spreadsheet with critical information such as available tours, tour operators, visitor ratings, other travel bloggers’ thoughts, price tag, tour schedules and days, location and how to access, do we need another flight, train or just a taxi, length of experience, where within our draft itinerary would it make the most sense? Once complete, we made a go/no go decision on each activity.

There were a few events we ruled out. For example, Colca Canyon, one of the world’s deepest at twice as deep the US Grand Canyon, known for its giant Andean condor; it requires a 3am wake-up call and a very long bus ride. While I’m certain its magical, with everything else we booked to do, a 3am wake-up call was not in the cards.

Even retirement travel planning has missteps and less than ideal approaches. We’re a work in progress as is our travel planning.