Tour Peru in a month?
Not enough time!
But-- perhaps like you-- for this writer/photographer team, it’s as long as time budgets would allow.
In our case, as likely yours, “Peru Tour” is a misnomer. Actually a circuit that covered not even a quarter of Peru’s terrain—from Lima to Cusco (by air) and then by bus from Cusco to Puno to Arequipa to Nazca to Paracas and then return to Lima devoured our month’s time. (Note: for those who have never gone to the Amazon that would certainly be a choice spot to add to this itinerary—but what to bump???)
Bus transport proved to be not only the budget-conscious way to get from point a to point b, but also THE way to see the diversity of Peru’s landscapes in the most time-economical manner and/or to grab some needed time to digest the rich Inca, pre-Inca and colonial history that we had immersed in for the three or 10 days prior.
With 20-20 hindsight, a bus trip from Lima to Cusco would have been far superior to the costly flight, not only to save dollars, but to give you a fighting chance to acclimate a tad to Cusco’s elevation. Altitude is another reason why you might want to explore the growing options of quasi-tour buses that take you from Cusco to Puno in a long day trip, making stops to Andahuaylillas, Raqchi and Pukara etc. along the way. A plane ride would make you relatively unprepared for the Lake Titicaca elevations.
More, the Cusco to Puno bus ride gives a chance to feel the hardscrabble life on the arid high plateau lands. You learn that recently new species of alfalfa adapted to the high altitudes have made it easier to sustain cows and dairy farming. The small hamlets along the way invite your imagination to think what it would be like to open your door to these expanses every morning. Perhaps you will have a pet llama or two. Life might be hard during the torrential rainy season, but you get the appeal.
That feeling of gentle village life that oozes into the bus perhaps adds to the jarring entrée to Juliaca en route to Puno. Here is urban sprawl Peru style that might remind some of the Houston-like consequences of skipping zoning. Everywhere there is dust and construction. The aesthetic-free new building designs seem from outer space. Later perhaps you too will have an idyllic homestay on a Lake Titicaca island and learn that their adult children have moved to Juliaca for more opportunity, if not to make a fortune.
The bus rides from Puno to Arequipa quickly make the colorful Puno streets fade as they return to Juliaca before traveling on to another arid landscape peppered with small cemeteries and hamlets about the same size. Agricultural patches appear like desert oases.
As you near Arequipa, distinctive volcanoes come to dominate the landscape, something you very much put into focus as you tour the Kolca Canyon outside Arequipa.
Crestfallen, we had thought that our choice of traveling from eastern Arequipa to the coast and not vice versa, would preclude getting much of a look at the changing landscapes as you get to the sea. That is a fluke of the daily bus timetables. Truth to tell, the late afternoon suns along the Southern Coast afford views of stunning sunsets and a feel for life a bit easier in what seems to be more fertile expanses.
One is struck too by how much earthquakes shape the Peru landscape and economy.—with places like Nazca still seeming to try to shake the rubble dust off its shoulders with new construction, and other cities like Ica lagging farther still. (Note: this tour was before the January 2018 earthquake in Peru—but it takes but one quick visit to an Inca construction to know that coping with earthquakes is anything but new to the Peruvian peoples. )
It’s the colors of Peru you feel so well from a bus window view. Purples, blues, golden, rouge, rust and more--- how natural Peruvian costumes feel, weavings, and city murals—Peru’s color palette is everywhere.
