Gosh, we didn’t change very much. Apart from fiddling around with our arrival in New Zealand so that we were visiting in autumn rather than winter (well worth it) we didn’t change a single leg of our Round-the-World ticket.
We did add two additional countries to our original list, though. Having arrived in Chile and realising it was too cold to enjoy Patagonia properly, we looked to the north and wondered whether it was worth seeing some of the key sites of Peru while we were on the other side of the world. Having decided that we should, it seemed a very tight fit. So rather than try and do it entirely independently we looked for a tour at a keen price, and found Peru Travel Plan (effectively part of Rickshaw Travel). They sort out transport, accommodation and a couple of key tours – but they don’t put you up in bland yet expensive 4-star hotels and they don’t ferry you around the whole route in a deluxe coach; they book the kind of hotels we might pick ourselves, and they use the same public buses that independent travellers and better-off locals use.
So we flew from Santiago to La Paz, adding Bolivia to our trip – albeit only three days. From La Paz via Lake Titicaca to Cusco, gateway to Machu Picchu. Then Cusco to Arequipa for the Colca Canyon. How exactly these arrangements turned out you’ll need to read back through the blog to discover.
Our Peru whistle-stop aside, why didn’t our itinerary change much from our original plans? Most travellers seem to. I think partly it’s because we were touring the whole way around the world – we never stopped to volunteer or work anywhere, we never stopped to stay with friends. And we had a keen sense that we wanted to see all the places we had on our itinerary, so even when we found spots like Tillietudlem or Meditasi or Chepu where we could have cheerfully chilled out for another week it was the thought of what else we’d have to miss out on that kept us on track.
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