Visiting the Southern area of Peru

[WMur]

Hi everybody! I am currently planning to leave La Paz and do loop to the Southern portion of Peru, including Arequipa, Cuzco and Puno. Any tips will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[c-m]

Lots of road closures when I was in Puno a few weeks back. I actually stayed in sillustani, you can camp in the car park there.

Hostal Estrellita on Tullumayu in Cusco is popular with bikers. It's distinctly average though.

[Peter Bodtke]

+1 visit Sillustani, a short ride north of Puno.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sillustani

Every third restaurant in Puno seems serve pizza. To my delight I found the best pizza in South America in a restaurant with a wood burning oven. So good I went back the next night. =) While in Puno you can take a tour of the floating villages. The tour I took was very scripted, but its still a cool thing to see.

If you plan to see Machu Picchu, the fun way to get there is to ride from Cusco to Santa Marta, then challenging part begins as you ride dirt road up into the hills, big drop offs and no guard rail (of course.) There are a few water crossing and depending recent rain fall, the streams may be insignificant to a force of nature not to be taken lightly. A friend tried to cross one of these on this way back from Machu Picchu and dropped his bike in the drink. The motorcycle was submerged for ~5 minutes...it took a month to get the needed parts fixed and shipped in from Japan. Once you get to Santa Terrisa there are several hotels, stop for the night, or not. A few miles further leave your bike at the hydro electric power plant. A guy will watch you bike for a few soles. If you arrive early there is a train that you can take to the base of Machu Picchu. Otherwise, walk along the rail road tracks for 11 kilometers. I walked both there and back. You can buy a ticket in advance, but I just showed up and bought mine. This might be risky in high season.

After Cusco I headed to Nazca to see the famous Nazca Lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_Lines

It takes a very long day to get from Cusco to Nazca, which I think most people break up into at least two days. For me the day ended a couple hours short in a no print town, then reached Nazca the next morning. If you have the funds, do the air plane tour. Memory tells me its was about $95 USD in 2013. Go directly to the airport and buy a ticket from one of several airlines that offer tours. Most people pay more when they buy their ticket thru a tour company. Buying your ticket direct saves money by cutting out the middleman.

Check out the huge sand dunes near Ica and tour a pisco vineyard and distillery. I went to a pisco vineyard and distillery north of Pisco. The tour at Pisco Vinas de Oro required arrangement/reservation in advance www.piscovinasdeoro.com.pe The tour we got was in Spanish. I failed to indicate a preference for English in advance, YMMV. One of my group understands Spanish pretty well, so we got the basics.

There is so much to see in Peru. Lima has many museums, historic and fine art, plus some of the best food in South America. See my blog for details, including museums in the north of Peru. Look at the posts from March 2014. I visited the pisco distillery on a later trip, so those details are yet to be posted.

[normw]

A flight over the Nazca Lines is truly memorable and well worth it. The outfit I went with flew a 10 seat Cessna Caravan and each passenger had a good window view. The ride can be bumpy and the pilot did steeply banked turns both clockwise and counter clockwise in each area so that both sides of the aircraft could get good photographs of the huge images etched into the desert floor. An extraordinary archeological experience.

[ridetheworld]

Good heavens southern Peru is utterly immense. From Puno I rode to Espinar via Lampa, then across the altiplano through unreal canyons, via Callyoma, Orcopampa and Andugua, arriving at the Cotahuasi canyon. From there I traveled north, through the canyon and over the puna, before emerging on the main Cusco/Nazca highway, utterly dazzled by seeing Tarmac again! You can spend weeks exploring that area, it's immensely beautiful and extremely remote. Both canyons are astonishingly beautiful and see only a fraction of the hordes of tourists that MP gets. Speaking basic Spanish in that region goes a long way, mostly just to talk to locals who are all super friendly. I uploaded a lot of info about the route on iOverlander. Lastly, just last week I took the backroad (not on road maps but on OSM) from Santa Teresa to near Abancay. Again, another awesome dirt track with little to no traffic. Peru is a dirt riders paradise! Any questions just ask me.

[WMur]

Looks like there is absolutely lots of fascinating things to do and see. Looking forward to get there. Thank you guys!!! I'll be in touch.