Travel Tips for the Ultimate Peru Explorer

We spent 14 days last June traveling around Peru – from Cusco, Puno, (side trip to) Bolivia, then to Lima — to immerse ourselves in the local culture, extraordinary landscape, and mouthwatering Peruvian cuisine. (I’ll save the details for another blogpost! 😉 )

Ever wondered what it’s like to travel to the other side of the world (from Philippines)? Here are 10 tips I’d like to share from our recent Peru experience:

1. It gets really cold in the morning before 8am and in the evening from 6pm onwards. Make sure to have a scarf and jacket with you wherever you go.
2. Between 8am-5pm it will be very sunny, so don’t forget to bring a hat, sunblock, and sunglasses, too!
3. If you are a heavy water drinker like me, carry your own water tumbler. Don’t order from the restaurant (It probably costs half the price of the ones in the menu) and don’t expect hotels to always have complimentary bottles for you.
4. Coca tea is usually complimentary for checked-in guests in hotels. Drink it in the morning to power you throughout the day and you may opt to fill your tumbler with coca tea to help with altitude sickness
5. Pack light – there are lots of things and ponchos and nice alpaca wool to buy in Peru. Our mistake is we packed a lot of clothes so we barely had space to buy souvenirs
6. Go to the market to buy alpaca wool and souvenirs. There will be lots of vendors here and there, especially in tourist spots, but hold your horses and buy at the market instead. They will have more or less the same items at 1/3 or half the price. Don’t forget to haggle!
7. Cuy is a local delicacy in the highlands and best eaten in Cusco for freshness of meat.
8. Must-try: ceviche in coastal/lake-y areas like Puno. They usually use raw trout or salmon for this. I’m still fascinated by all the zesty flavors exploding together inside the mouth and how they serve it together with Peruvian corn to complement the citrus-y taste.