I'm traveling Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Boliva and Peru, by road, over 3 months......?

Question

.......Are there any firm do/ don't's?

We will be arriving, via flight, into Rio in March, where we plan to spend a month and then head on to our chosen destinations in a clockwise direction. We haven't booked any domestic travel yet. Does anyone have any tips at all?

Answer 1

Hmm, all I can tell you is that I am planning to go to Brazil but have already been to Peru. It was a university tour, going through Lima, Cusco, Puno, Lake Titicaca, Aguas Caliente, and Machu Picchu. We had a lot of free time and I can say:

Lima: Not too pleasant, but at the same time, better that I expected. The city center and where our hotel was, Miraflores (affluent area) are fairly clean and nice, some nice restaurants and all. Can't really swim in the cold ocean, though, although we still did a little... Just saying, you'd be the only one trying it. Sandless beach with cold water. There was nothing wrong with Lima, just nothing great. Felt safe.

Cusco: Very different from Lima, almost no Spanish influence here as most of the residents aren't of Spanish descent. Felt very safe, at any time of day.

Puno/LakeTiticaca: Puno is like the jump-off town for a Lake Titicaca adventure. I would say Puno was by fat the most shady city we went to. It was scary because me and a girl went out to the local market at around 8pm and by that time, all the mainstream shops and such were locked with big metal gates, and the streets were deserted. We wandered about the city and were in area that was deserted and we both swear to this day that we heard gunshots seemingly 3-4 blocks away, but somehow, since we never felt a target on our trip, we reacted calmly and just headed back to the market and then our hotel. But LOL, when we got to the hotel, it also was now shut with a metal gate and we got in only after knocking on the bars and explaining, in broken Spanish, to the gaurds that we stay at this hotel. Whew!

Lake Titicaca was pretty great, with underrated views. That big island you end up going to on a boat, the views are just awesome.

Aguanas Caliented/MachuPicchu: Again, Aguanas Caliente,  roughly "hot springs", is a jump-off point. It is humid and is in the subtropics, or a forest that transitions from a regular forest into a tropical jungle (which would be the Amazon jungle, in this case). Town seemed to be 75% tourists, but had a very nice jungle feel, houses built on hills and surrounded by lush vegetation, with clothes hanging out and drying on ropes. Very cool, like in an adventure movie.

And Machu Picchu was AMAZING, best part of the trip for me, by far.

General: Everyone will ask to sell you something. A positive is that no one asked me for money straight up, they always wanted to sell something, so that's good. Buy a few things here and there (it's cheap), but you'll also learn to say "no" because you will have tons and tons of people trying to sell you stuff.

-In Puno, we had no warm water and the heating seemed to be working at half-speed, and the temp. up so high is always cold, so taking cold showers was uncomfortable in this setting.

-In Aguas Calientes, had a nice little room, but there was a spider in our shower. I don't know if it was dangerous, and its presence didn't bother us (me or my traveling roomie), but just so you know...

-Everything is very cheap, in general. A lot of stores, however, won't have posted prices and they will obviously try to hustle you, and there's not much you'll be able to do. Just pay the slightly higher than expected price... Still lower than what you're used to, assuming you come from a "Western" nation.

-Some people will try to just make friendly convo with you. Most of it will just be that, friendly convo. They are just curious about you and are an easy-going people. Not always the case, though. me and a friend on the trip had a 14-yr old (she told us) girl in Cusco try to sell us some little dolls or something like that, and we didn't want one, but eventually bought from her. Anyways, she didn't go away, kept talking (in fairly good English. they teach English at their school) and started asking us where my hotel was. I refused to tell her at first, because I didn't want her to stand outside the hotel in the morning and wait for me to come out (this happened ALL the time in Cusco. A women trying to sell us stuff upon our arrival in Cusco airport actually kept appearing at our hotel every morning and evening and would show up outside of restaurants. There will be sellers literally stalking you like this, all of them elderly females in our case, and harmless, but still...), but then we realized that she is a harmless 14 year old girl, and we are walking to our hotel anyways, so eventually she will get there anyways, so we might as well tell her where we are staying, so we say, "Savoy Cusco. That's where we stay, but we're not buying anything else from you today, okay? We don't have any more money, so if you want, come back tomorrow morning and we'll buy something." She says to us, "No, no, I have school tomorrow morning. Can come your hotel now, I can do something maybe? You pay now, then?" You get what she meant? Yeah, she was 14. Needless to say, we refused!!!

-One more thing about people selling you stuff in Cusco. They are not threatening, and you will appreciate that they are living very poorly and are actually trying to SELL you things, rather then beg for money, and so this will be very difficult to refuse at times. But sometimes, you will just have to, because you will end up paying them a lot of money as is.

-Those sellers that "stalk" you every day, as I was talking about above, are really good. Seriously, you wlll gain an appreciation! They will, upon your arrival at the airport or hotel, memerize your name, and then make sure to call you by this name every time you walk outside of a hotel, and eventually, they will start selling you paintings that will depict a natural scene in the area, and your name will be written, spelled as best they could spell it... And they will try to sell this, so this is difficult to say no to... Also, sometimes, when you say no, they will offer for you to still take the item and pay them the next day. Again, very hard to say no to.

-On that big island that most boats take you to on Lake Titicaca, you'll probably be treated to a music/dancing performance by the locals, at one point. Know that the youngest of them, the 3-4 year olds, are all well trained in their business! I took a digital pic of an adorable little girl and she came up to me right after their dance was done and opened her palms, asking for my payment for the pic. Embarrassingly, as I wasn't expecting a fee, I didn't have anything but a 20 nuevo sol on me, and so I had to borrow from a fellow traveler. Still, just watch out for stuff like that! Always have a little bit of coin change on you!

Anything else, emal me on here!