Peru Travel/Lodging Edition

I'm trying to write this as soon after my trip to Peru as possible. I had such a blast and will never be able to capture all the little moments of laughter, storytelling and encounters. I would suggest taking this trip yourself and you'll see.

One thing that help me tremendously doing my research on Lima, Cuzco and Machu Picchu were Travel blogs and discussion threads. I was freaking out over crossing the border for example and people in discussion boards gave names on bus companies what they did to help you cross the border etc. It was great.

So in a act of giving back I'm creating a blog that maps out the details of our travel and lodging. I predict this will be long, so I will do an activities and sites blogs separately. Enjoy!


Alright for starters my sweetie and I bussed it down to from Esmeraldas to Guayaquil, about 8 hours on an overnight bus. We took Occidentales. I like this bus like as they are really clean, comfy seats and go directly to the destination with minimal stops. The only bus I know here in Ecuador that will go truly, truly direct is Transportes Ecuador. I love them! But they don't go to the Esmeraldas region.

Once we get to Guayaquil due to my research I knew we had two options. CIFA and Ormeño. I had looked both offices up online and it appeared they could both be found in the Terminal Terrestre in Guayaquil but we got the truth when we arrived.

The reason I chose CIFA and Ormeño as my two options is because they are the only ones I found that will stop AND wait for you at the border crossings, both in Ecuador and in Peru. There are several buses that take you to Huaquilllas (border of Ecuador) or Agua Verders (Border of Peru) and then you have to find another bus. In doing that you have to deal with a border town, cabs (That could be shady) and playing it by ear hoping a bus passes by. I wanted to cut down on the calamity as much as possible. I imagine you pay for the convenience though, but I'll get to that later.

We get to the Terminal and since our night bus arrived later than I had planned the 7:00am CIFA bus had left. I This CIFA Bus was going to take us through to Piura which is well into Peru and from there we would have switched buses. No problem we had a plan B...Ormeño AND rumor had it that Ormeño would take us all the way to LIMA!! our finally destination! The men at CIFA were telling us that we could catch a 10:30 bus or a 1:00 bus but they were stopping close to the border and I didn't want to deal with that. When we went looking for Ormeño however it turns out they are NOT in the Terminal anymore. They are around the corner...so that meant leaving the Terminal on whim hoping that this story about a direct bus was true. We figured it was worth the gamble. We grabbed a bite to eat and hopped in a cab for the office of Ormeño.

Turns out their office is located at (as of March 2011) Centro de Negocios El Terminal Blq C Lc 33-34, Guayaquil number 04-2130847. We took an 11:30 bus Straight to Lima!! Joy!!! They watched our bags while we went and bought snacks for the bus ride and everything. The bus from Guayaquil to Hauquillas (the border) is 5 hours, Huaquillas (passing through Agua Verdes, border of Peru) to Lima is an estimated 19 hours. I believe our trip was about that. Tickets cost $70.

I would like to go on record saying that the ride was a Breeze! I was nervous about being on a bus that whole time but the crew at Ormeño were awesome. We had 3 meals, dinner that night, breakfast in the morning and lunch before we arrived to our destination. They even honored vegetarian options, which I really appreciated. The ayudante on our bus was really helpful and prepared. Just as promised the bus stopped at the border leaving Ecuador and again arriving in Peru. When anyone hit a snag the ayudante was there to help. One lady had some issue and it held us up a bit, but I was like I Love this bus, cause they didn't leave her, it was a "we came together we leave together" mentality and hey, if that were me I would be so thankful the bus waited, so I appreciated it.

They showed movies, served snacks and provided a comfy environment the whole way. So thumbs up to Ormeño all the way. (1 472-5000 is their Peru number I believe).

So we arrive in Lima at their station that was luckily pretty close to Miraflores, the area we were staying in Lima. We took a cab...about 15 soles to our hotel. Oh by the way we exchanged our money at the Peru entrance border. They were safe and gave a pretty good exhange rate. It was really helpful having the money ready when we left. There is also an ATM at the Ormeño station however that I imagine would only be spittin out soles.

I would recommend the area of Miraflores. It's super cute and safe. I'm not always down for a super touristy scene, but it provided a way for us to walk around see sites, the beach, have food options, fresh air and not have to worry about cabs or ladrones.

We stayed Hotel El Ducado which I totally recommend. The people there were extra attentive and it was a cozy set up. Four of us stayed in a suite so we had a stove, pots, a microwave, dishes, dining table, living room, huge flat screen tv with cable etc. Really nice. Great bathroom and shower. The pricing on the website is user friendly and I'm blanking on actually how many nights we paid for as we all arrived at different times. I think my bill came out to be 916 soles which was for I believe two nights but check the website to be sure. They are located at 337 (can you believe it!) Juan Fanning, Miraflores Lima. #51 447 1919. I'll go over the sites and activities in another post.

After the night spent in Lima together the crew was all together so it was off to the airport to fly into Cuzco! We flew StarPeru. Now let me tell you about Star Peru. After being on their website a couple of times, I had to Google and make sure they are a legitimate company! Their site kept logging me out, not letting us make reservations, just loco!

However, it turned out to be legit and we ended up flying with them. A couple of things. It seems like the sooner you can buy your ticket the cheaper. We were all buying our tickets together and the first girl who bought hers got a a $203 ticket, but the end of that week the tickets had gone up $80 bucks, and as we bought each individual ticket the praise went up and up and up. So beware of that. Another thing is we had trouble buying all of our tickets together. I don't know if the site was just having issues or if that was standard ops for StarPeru. We had to buy them one at a time. Lastly and most importantly, you cannot buy these tickets if you have a free email address. ??? I know. So if the email you enter is gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc, those free services are not honored. We all ended up using my friends work email and that finally worked. We though our credit cards were getting rejected but it was all about the email. Talk about heavy security! All in all StarPeru can offer really affordable prices (and at the last minute! we were buying tickets a week before our trip). The plane was tiny but comfy. The flight is like an hour our two but they served us a snack, ham and cheese slider and cake. Not too shabby.

Once in Cuzco we stayed in Niños Hotels. I can't say enough good things about this place. If you go to Cuzco STAY There. It has a chill ambience, white and green decor which I loved AND the most important thing....The place is a hotel but also a foundation. All of the profits from the hotels are used to give 500 extremely neglected children from Cuzco a hot meal on a daily basis, a warm shower and medical and dental assistance! Plus so much more like support on their projects, help with homework the list goes on. All that good heart energy is felt and it's an amazing place. More on that in the Activities blog though. Apparently their are two locations we stayed in the Calle Meloc 442 y Calle Fiero 476, Cusco location. AMAZING!!! Please check out the website or hit me up with any questions about this place. Loved, loved, loved it. We stayed here both before and after our Machu Picchu trip.

We spend the night in Niños hotel and then we caught our early (and only) train on PeruRail. PeruRail I believe is the only way to get from Cuzco to Machu Picchu and the train leaves once a day. Coming back there are several options but going there is only one time. There are different train types. The Expedition is the "Backpacker" train and the Vistadome is the high end option. The Expedition ticket prices were about $56 (you KNOW that's what I was on) and it was a fabulous ride. It was a BEAUTIFUL View and the staff was helpful. Since it's the rainy season now (March/April) we had to take a shared van to another train station, but if you travel during these months PeruRail takes care of all the travel changes so don't worry.


When we got off of the train we were in Agua Calientes!!

We stayed at Hostal Varayoc which was okay. The family was super nice and it was certainly affordable. I think it was $35 for 4 of us a night and we had two separate rooms. They had an internet cafe attached which was open pretty late. The connection was slow, but hey you're supposed to be climbing mountains not surfin the web right!? There were times there were super accommodating, like when we just wanted to look something up really fast and didn't make us pay for the internet service or when we got drenched on the mountain and they let us change our close in the kitchen since we had already checked out. Another helpful accommodation was they let us leave our bags behind the front desk after checkout so we could spend one more day at Machu Picchu before our train. It wasn't a five star establishment by any means but it definitely fit all of our needs. I would check it out at least if you stay in Agua Calientes.

Note: The only place to stay at Machu Picchu is Sanctuary Lodge (starting at $925 USD) other than that you have to stay in Agua Calientes.

Another note: The van from Agua Calientes to Machu Picchu is $15 that is USD. You can walk up the stairs but that takes over an hour so be warned.

For all the fun had at Machu Picchu check out the Activities blog, we had a blast.

After our last day at MP/AC we took the PeruRail train back to Cuzco stayed at Hotel Niños and flew Star Peru back to Lima. Our bus didn't leave for Guayaquil until 8:30 pm that night and we arrived back into Miraflores in the afternoon. The folks at Ormeño let us "check" our bags for no cost, just a tip (I tipped 10 soles I have no idea if that was a good tip or not) and none of our stuff came up missing so that was a relief.

The ride BACK to Guayaquil was a grueling one. It was the same company but we didn't get fed as many times, they didn't ask about vegetarian, we stopped a lot and it made the trip a lot longer. Also, coming back is always a tougher trip than going, so I guess I should take that into account too. I still stand by Ormeño. After that we took Aerotaxi back to Esmeraldas. I would not recommend this bus line. There are so many other options while traveling within Ecuador. We chose it because their office opened first and we wanted to finally be home. Next time I will wait for TransEsmeraldas or Occidentales.

That pretty much concludes the Travel and Lodging Edition of my Peru Travels. Next up is the Peru Activities blog where I'll talk about what we actually did, restaurants I recommend and things of the like. I really hope this helps!!

Safe Travels!!!