Okay sumary time, right now of course all I can think of is the pain and sickness as I am still sick and waiting for the flight out of Lima. However I will stretch my memory to try and recover some nuggets for those of you who are thinking about traveling here.

I'll start with the best time to visit. I simply cannot figure a better time than now that we did. For some weird reason the peak season is june-first half of august. whats strange about this is that it's very cold here then. We arrived on the 21st of August and it's still a solid month before the rain season (today is the first day I've seen rain). But at the same time it's warmer as it's spring, it's less tourists and cheaper as it's not peak season.

 

In common for both countries,

Thank god they use western style toilets everywhere, no holes in the ground. However the pipes cant handle paper so _all_ toilet paper needs to be thrown in a bin that they hopefully empty often.

Coca leaves are legal to use and chew, it is not at all the same thing as cocaine (until you process it). Personally I found the taste terrible, really bad. But the effect on the other hand was most delightful. It's supposed to help against the Altitude, I don't know about that. I did however always become happier after chewing some.

 

Peru,

Truly a land of incredible contrast, the airport and city of Lima (Lima btw pretty much never has blue sky, you can wikipedia it) has pretty much western standard but as soon as you go outside Lima it becomes quite poor and lacking standard. However as long as you go to any of the 5 places with something touristy (nasca, cusco, up north and some I cant remember) You can easily find a shiny hotel (when I say shiny I mean that in relation to the location, it's never western class (unless you pay looots).

A hotel for three will typically be around 20-30USD for a three people room, so 7-10 dollars each. It will most of the time include private bathroom, towels and always bed sheets (it's a hotel not a backpackers).

Peruvians are short btw, asian style. Bolivians are even shorter ;-)

Anything you wanna do in Peru like fly over nasca lines, buses between destinations are all europan class and pretty much priced thereafter. So you will pay a fair bit when you do stuff, but just living and eating is cheap.

Eating is typically around 5-6USD for a descent meal but nothing super.

Overall it was actually more expensive than expected but not as bad as europe. A cocktail will set you back about 4USD but since it's not peak season it's almost always happy hour and 2 for 1.

Now with all this said, we have travelled quite nicely and you can do Peru dirt cheap if you want to. There are local buses and cheap food and cheap hotels. Trick is to find them and then live with the lower standard.

Most people in Peru will speak a few words of english unless you go super local.

 

Bolivia,

 

Bolivia is about 20-30% cheaper on pretty much everything and airport and major cities like La Paz is not as shiny as their peruvian counterparts.

They have not quite learnt how to charge for touristy stuff like the salt flats and it cost and amazing 1USD to enter, so things like that is lots cheaper in Bolivia.

Bolivia is simply a bit more raw and a lot cooler experience if you ask me, the nature is to die for, from the salt flats, to the mountains and lake titicaca. The deserts and rock formations is absolutely fantastic.

About renting a car, we rented one for one week and ended up paying about 900USD with gas and all. So very expensive. Most likely more expensive than shipping the three of us around on busses. But no regrets here because we had a liberty you simply can not get otherwise and the experience is one that will last for a very long time.

We are also all of us pretty much allergic to guides and tours so this was a fantastic way to du stuff like the salt flat without any of that.

Bolivians are very nice but speak pretty much no english whatsoever (I mean it) except at the most touristy places. But you would be surprised how well you get along with about 20 words of spanish and lots of creativity. Barganing for instance is done trough a calculator. They enter what they want, you erase it and enter what you wanna pay and so on.

 

 

It's hard to summarize three weeks like this. I have probably forgotten loads. The main points are probably that it was more expensive than I thought and also more developed than I thought (much more than Nepal for instance). Other than that it pretty much was as amazing as you would think :-)