2022 - 07 - 17 - Peru - Lima

The initial idea for our three week Peru trip was to do everything ourselves and plan bus, trian, taxi whatever on a day to day basis like we usually do, but in the end we ended up using http://www.PeruHop.com/ for most of our travel needs and we couldn't have be happier. 

PeruHop has different "hop on hop off" experiences where you pay for the end to end trip and spend as much time as you want in each stop. We went for the Lima - La Paz - Cusco trip and booked a return flight with Viva Airlines from Cusco to Lima.

The first day in Lima was a bit of a shock, even after living in a reasonably "crowded" city like Milan. https://www.airportexpresslima.com/ was recommended by every source we found to go from the airport to the city centre but they shut down in mid July. After seeing the warnings of express kidnappings we ended up booking a taxi in the airport which cost more than negotiating a price with a taxi driver.

One of the first things I do when visiting a new country is go to a local supermarket so see what they sell. I was surprised to see that they sold a typical Italian Christmas sweet "Panettone" in what would be the middle of summer for us:

We soon learned that Peruvians love sweet stuff. Inka Kola is probably the best example. It's extremely sweet, tastes like bubblegum and people have it with food instead of water, beer or wine. 

The tourist info in Miraflores was excellent and we bought a Peru SIM and booked a free walking tour of Lima. In retrospect we didn't need the Peru SIM as Google Fi gave better coverage and speed and worked in Bolivia and Colombia as well. The Motorola G8 Power battery life is also way better than the Alcatel - MW40V 4G router we used with the local SIM.