Country Guide: Peru

Name: Peru (in Spanish: Perú)

Continent: South America

Capital (and Largest) City: Lima

Languages: Spanish, Quechua and Aymara

Currency: Sol

Drives on the: Right

Time Zone: Peru Standard Time (UTC -5)

Adaptor Types: Type A and Type C

Description: Peru is a country on the western side of South America, bordered by Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile. It has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean on its western side, as well as the Andes mountain range in the centre and the Amazon rainforest in the east. Best-known for its archaeological sites and traditional culture dating back to the Inca period and earlier, Peru is a destination on many people's bucket lists.

Why You Should Visit: Of course, Machu Picchu is the place that everyone wants to visit in Peru, and with good reason - it's absolutely spectacular - but there are many other interesting places to visit all over the country. Personally, I've visited two regions of Peru: the Cusco region, which is beautiful and fascinating, but very touristy, and the Tacna region in the far south, which is rarely visited by anyone other than Peruvians or Chileans. Despite being off the radar, Tacna has some great architecture, interesting archaeological sites and dramatic landscapes, and I'm sure the same applies to every region of the country.

Fun Fact: Peru is home to over 70% of the world's alpaca population!

My Blogposts About Peru

Charlotte's Travel Adventures

- UNESCO World Heritage Sites (Cusco and Machu Picchu)

- Movie Travels (Cusco and Machu Picchu)

- Our Day Trip to Peru (Tacna region)

- Cusco

- Sacred Valley of the Incas

- Maras and Moray

- Aguas Calientes (Machupicchu Pueblo)

- Machu Picchu

- Travel Tips: The Best Hotels I've Ever Stayed in (Cusco and Aguas Calientes)

- Charlotte's Travel Adventures is 5 Years Old! (Machu Picchu)

- My Year of Adventurous Travel (Cusco region)

Clockwise starting from top left: Aguas Calientes, Cusco, Chinchero, Tacna, Machu Picchu, Maras

Check out the rest of my Country Guides here!

My Year of Adventurous Travel

As this blog is called Charlotte's Travel Adventures, it seems only right to write a post about adventurous travel!

Of course, I like going on holiday to relax, and visiting places to see interesting sights...but travel is also about having new and different experiences.

The 15 months that I spent living in Chile were a time when I made an effort to go on some exciting and sometimes a little extreme adventures. Though of course, there were plenty of challenges during that time (which I wrote about in this recent post), I feel like I really made the most of it and had a lot of fun travelling and trying new things across South America.

Here are 5 of my biggest adventures from the year!

Indoor Surfing in Santiago

Though I'd tried windsurfing in 2016, I'd always wanted to have a go at classic surfing. Surprisingly enough, even though Santiago isn't by the sea, you can surf there - Mall Sport offers indoor surfing lessons, and Claudio and I took one in May 2022. 

This experience was actually the most extreme of them all, I'd say! You basically get have to try to stay afloat against powerful jets of water, and if you don't manage it, you get thrown across that big curved area you can see in my pictures. Though we had plenty of bruises and even a couple of scrapes afterwards, we had a lot of fun. 

A Speedboat Ride in the Pacific Ocean

Our weekend in Papudo was one of our most low-key trips away during my time living in Chile, but it was actually one of my favourites. We saw so many beautiful animals there, from adorable pet cats to incredible marine life. Plus, the town and its beaches are absolutely beautiful.

Our time there was mostly very relaxing, with the exception of a boat trip we took to Isla Los Lobos. To my surprise, the boat was actually a dinghy with an engine, and it went incredibly fast - it was fun, though I was slightly scared that either I or my stuff would fall in the sea!

But the sights we saw on that trip were incredible: Humboldt penguins, sea lions and even a beautiful dolphin. We finished off the ride with a jump into the water at a beautiful, secluded beach. It was such a memorable experience!

Ziplining in the Andes

Another extremely memorable experience was going ziplining in the Andes mountains. This was something I'd always wanted to try, and I was really excited about it...until we actually got there and saw it!

The experience took place at Cascada de las Ánimas activity centre in Cajón del Maipo, which is such an enchanting and beautiful place. But the zip-line is suspended 25 metres above the River Maipo and looks pretty daunting! We were both pretty nervous when preparing to set off, but it was such a fun and exhilarating experience!

In fact, we liked it so much that we did it again a few months later at Parque Aventura in Santiago. 

White-Water Rafting in Argentina

White-water rafting was another sport I'd wanted to try for years, and I took the opportunity to try it while renewing my visa in Argentina. Although my day at the activity centre was rather long without a lot to do, the activity itself was so much fun, and the landscapes of the Andes and the Mendoza River were beautiful. I definitely plan to go rafting again at some point!

Backpacking Solo to Machu Picchu

We had several adventurous trips during the 15 months, but the most adventurous was when I went to Peru for a week on my own with just a backpack. 

During my time there I took in the sites in and around Cusco, and travelled around the Sacred Valley of the Incas, before taking the train to Aguas Calientes and hiking up hundreds of stone steps to the famous citadel, Machu Picchu.

It was a trip I'd dreamed of for several years and took quite a lot of organising, but it all turned out really well. I had an amazing time!

In my opinion, trying new experiences and adventures like these are a great way to get out of your comfort zone and create memories that will last forever.

There are still several other adventurous experiences I want to try, such as surfing at a beach, paragliding, and maybe even scuba diving.

Perhaps there will be more extreme adventures to come on this blog!

Charlotte's Travel Adventures is 5 Years Old!

This blog, Charlotte's Travel Adventures, is turning 5 years old, so I felt it was only right to write a post to celebrate this special anniversary!

I published my first post on the 25th October 2018, which doesn't really feel that long ago, even though a lot has happened since then. At the time, I was back at university in Nottingham, having just completed a life-changing Year Abroad, and I wanted to try to keep this whole spirit of travel and adventures going, even though my everyday life had gone back to being something more mundane, which is why I decided to start this blog.

I didn't post again until January 2019, when I wrote about my trip to Chile to visit my boyfriend Claudio, who I'd been with for about half a year at that point. And after that, I didn't write much else until I finished final exams at university in June 2019. But since then, with the exception of the first couple of months of Covid lockdowns, I've written here pretty regularly, no matter what my situation is, or whether or not I've had many opportunities to travel.

The last five years have not always been easy for me. When you leave university, it's quite a weird time, where you don't have the structure of school and university anymore, and you're thrown out into the world to figure out for yourself what you're going to do next; it's hard to know if you're making the right decisions until you can look back with the gift of hindsight. Not long after graduation, I decided that being a teacher of English as a foreign language out in Chile was what I wanted to do for the next year or two, if not longer. So I got myself TEFL qualified, started teaching online, and eventually managed to find a job at a language school in Santiago, which I planned to start at some point in 2020.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and life was pretty much put on hold for two years. With the exception of the last few months of 2020, when Claudio came to visit me and my family, the pandemic was a time of just having to be patient and get through each day and week at a time, while waiting to be able to get my life started again.

And then in February 2022, I was able to finally move to Chile, and since then I've been making up for lost time! I had some fantastic experiences during my 15 months in South America, and then moved to Malta for a few months to complete an internship in digital marketing, and now I've got a permanent role in the marketing sector and am currently based in the city of Bristol.

Even more excitingly, Claudio and I had a civil union in May and plan to have a proper engagement and wedding in the near future! He'll be coming to join me here in the UK later this year, and I can't wait! 

So although there were a lot of of challenges over the last five years and there will surely be more to come, I'm really happy and grateful for how things have turned out.

And there has been a lot to document on this blog! I've spent 18 months of the last two years living abroad and have been on various exciting travels over the last five years. Since starting this blog, I've travelled in 12 different countries (13 if you count England and Wales as separate countries!), 6 of which I'd never visited before.

Here are a selection of highlights...

Visiting the Atacama Desert in January 2019

Teaching English in Poland in August 2019

Visiting Madrid in November 2019

Visiting Lisbon in November 2019

Visiting Buenos Aires in February 2020

Visiting Uruguay in February 2020

Exploring London with Claudio in October 2020

Visiting Stockholm in October 2020

Exploring Cardiff with Claudio in December 2020

Moving to Chile in February 2022

Visiting Machu Picchu in October 2022

Visiting Rio de Janeiro in December 2022

Visiting the Chilean Lake District and Chiloé in April 2023

Our civil union in May 2023

Living in Malta between May and August 2023

Visiting Sicily in June 2023

I hope that in another 5 years' time, I'll still be writing on this blog and will have plenty more exciting travel adventures between now and then!

Travel Tips: The Best Hotels I've Ever Stayed in

Seeing as I won't be going on any "big trips" for at least a couple of months, my plan for the blog is to alternate between writing posts about my travels and day trips around Bristol and beyond, and writing posts about other travel-related topics, in order to keep things varied.

My latest post was about a local trip, so this one is going to be something a bit different. I had a look through the list of post ideas I've built up over the years (quite a few!) in order to decide what took my fancy to write about today, and in the end, I decided to write about the topic of hotels, as it's something I haven't really done before!

Generally, these days, I'm happy to stay somewhere clean, comfortable and reasonably priced. I used to try to look for more unique, characterful places to stay, with somewhat mixed results - I remember regretting staying at the old-fashioned pub/hotel in York that was freezing cold with a smelly bathroom, and the supposedly fancy boutique hotel in Bournemouth where my room was tiny and the shower didn't work. Both times I wished I'd opted for the reliability of an Ibis or Premier Inn! Having said that though, when you do stay in a hotel that's really special, it definitely makes your trip that extra bit special too.

I like to think that nowadays I'm quite good at choosing hotels that are both good value and super nice places to relax after a day of exploring. I've stayed in quite a few really great ones over the years, particularly during the last couple of years, and so I've decided to put my favourites together into a list.

Here they are!

Admiral Grand Hotel, Slano, Croatia

Image by Rachel Claire from Pexels.com

This hotel in the Dalmatia region of southern Croatia is one of (I think) only three 5* hotels that I've stayed in during my life so far. I went there with my family in 2012 and we had a wonderful week in the hotel, which is located in the village of Slano, and also took day trips to Dubrovnik, and Neum and Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The hotel is pretty huge, and has lots of facilities, including an indoor pool, an outdoor pool, various bars and restaurants, a nightclub, and a beautiful private beach surrounded by mountains. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera phone at the time, and I've got no photos to show of the hotel, so enjoy this nice image of Dubrovnik instead!

Cedar Manor Hotel, Windermere, England, UK

My parents actually won a competition to stay at this 5* hotel in the Lake District, and seeing as Covid kept me still living at home in 2020, I got to come along with them! My room was huge, with a four-poster bed, dressing table, and a bath the size of a hot tub, so staying there was quite a special experience. It was also great to be surrounded by the beautiful nature of the Lake District, and overall, it was a really relaxing few days. I actually enter travel competitions on a weekly basis and hope to win something like this myself some day, but it hasn't happened yet - maybe I'll be lucky soon!

Read more here!

Novotel, Arica, Chile

My partner Claudio and I both loved staying in this hotel located right on the beach in the city of Arica in the far north of Chile. The room was so comfortable and luxurious, as well as being reasonably priced, and the view from the window of the beach and Morro de Arica was absolutely stunning. I hope we'll get to go back there again at some point in the future!

Read more here!

Ayenda Estancia San Pedro, Cusco, Peru

My solo trip to Peru in October 2022 was a week where I really tried to immerse myself in the Peruvian culture and history as much as possible. I spent my first four days in the historic city of Cusco, which I used as a base to take day trips around the Sacred Valley of the Incas. During this time, I stayed in Ayenda Estancia de San Pedro, which is actually a hotel created inside an old colonial building. It's a beautiful place and really added a sense of authenticity to the trip.

I also want to give an honourable mention to Machu Picchu Adventure House, the hotel I stayed in in Aguas Calientes after my time in Cusco. This place was super comfortable and had very nice Inca-style décor.

Read more here!

Park Inn by Radisson, Puerto Varas, Chile

There are actually two Radisson hotels in the charming town of Puerto Varas in the south of Chile: a more expensive one right on the shore of Lago Llanquihue, and the more affordable Park Inn further into the town. We chose to stay at the Park Inn during our trip and found it so cosy and comfy. The hotel was built in a traditional German style, typical of the area, and has beautiful views across the rest of the town and the lake.

Read more here!

B&B Vergilia, Syracuse, Sicily, Italy

I earned some hotel vouchers from doing weekly surveys when I was living at home between 2020 and early 2022, but wasn't able to use them while I was living in Chile, and had to quickly decide what to do with them before they expired in May this year. I chose to use them on a stay in B&B Vergilia during my trip to Sicily in June and was very happy with my choice! This is one of these sorts of hotels that are quite common in Italy (I stayed somewhere similar in Florence), which are built inside grand, old houses, meaning that all of the rooms are incredibly spacious. B&B Vergilia is also a family-run hotel, and the owners are super friendly and welcoming, so I'll definitely be staying there again if I return to Syracuse in the future!

Read more here!

39 St. George, Victoria/Rabat, Gozo, Malta

This hotel is located in Victoria (also known as Rabat), the capital of Gozo, Malta's sister island, and is a really characterful place. I loved the Medieval vibe of the building, as well as its amazing views over the stunning St. George's Square. It was also super comfortable, which made a nice change from the hostel that I was living in in Malta at the time!

Read more here!

I had a fantastic time staying in all of these hotels, and they were great bases to come back to after days of exploring incredible places. I hope to continue with my run of choosing great hotels, and then perhaps I'll have another one of these posts to write in a couple of years' time!

Check out the rest of my Travel Tips here!