I'll be traveling through Ecuador and Peru starting this Friday. Specifically, I'll be in:

Ecuador
Quito
Otavalo
Portoviejo
Puerto Lopez
Cuenca

Peru
Piura
Lima
Huarez
Ica

Looking for any info/advice on places to stay, eat, things to do, etc.

7/22/2008 3:15:52 PM

damn! if only you had asked about chile!

7/22/2008 3:17:43 PM

maybe next time.

7/22/2008 3:19:05 PM

i heard the women basically throw themselves at you in Peru (especially in Lima)

7/22/2008 3:57:55 PM

I went to Quito and Otavalo like 10 years ago, so my memory's kind of fuzzy, but:


-Definitely hit up the market in Otavalo. You can get souvenirs (wool ponchos, handbags, trinkets) for pretty cheap. And be sure to haggle.

-Mitad del Mundo -- interesting tourist attraction

-The highlight of my trip, though, was mountain biking down Mount Cotopaxi. We did it with this guy called "The Biking Dutchman": http://www.bikingdutchman.com/. An awesome experience ... just be prepared to flip over the handlebars a few times, get hit in the face by hail flurries, and see some gorgeous countryside.

7/22/2008 4:21:31 PM

^ damn, we wanted to go to Cotopaxi, but it said you need like 5 days to acclimatize and we're going with a set of parents so we don't need them passing out or anything.

7/22/2008 5:30:39 PM

I've heard crime has been increasing in Ecuador, my climbing partner was mugged in Quito before we met in Mendoza and there have been several reports of violence on climbing forums about the country.

Dunno--I'd still go there since it is cheap with good climbing.

7/22/2008 9:44:38 PM

You are actually going to go to Peru and not see Macchu Picchu and Cuzco?

Are you some kind of mental deficient?

My overwhelming piece of advice would be to adjust your schedule to include that if it is at all possible. But, failing that...

Lima is kind of lame. Especially this kind of year. The weather will suck and there's not a lot of attractiveness to the town anyway. Larcomar is the exception -- it's an open-air shopping center in the side of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. I stayed briefly in the Hotel Colon, which is close to Larcomar and the Parque Kennedy (which also has some good places to eat/hang out). It was a pretty nice hotel, nothing mind-blowing but good quality.

As for eating, Chinese food. There will be a lot of it, and it is generally the best common food in Lima. I wish I could remember the name of this very nice, fancy buffet we ate at...but I can't. Dove Vai is an ice cream place near the Parque Kennedy. It's not huge or fancy or some big touristy place, but it sells the most delicious desert you will ever eat. If you don't eat there, you are a mental deficient.

Bembos is their big burger chain, and I'd suggest eating there at least once. It has some interesting variations on the concept, it's safe (in terms of getting sick), it's good, and it's enough like home to be familiar while being different enough to seem decidedly new.

There's a part of town called Barranco. "Bar" would be the key syllable. If you like bars and clubs, go there and wander around until you find one that suits you. Some of them will charge a negligible cover if they have something special going on, and some may have specials they direct at tourist (specifically the "come in here and get a free rum and coke")

All of the local beers are quite good, Cusquena being my personal favorite, but it's almost pointless for me to mention it because it is advertised like crazy.

There's fun stuff to do around Ica, but I spent far less time there. Sandboarding and dune-buggy tours of the desert are a lot of fun, and you can see some interesting shit (like whale skeletons...in the desert). The coastal towns in the region are also pretty neat, and the beaches actually exist, as opposed to Lima. A boat tour of some of the nearby islands is fun if you're into that sort of thing, you get to see penguins, seals, cormorants, etc.

Quote :

"i heard the women basically throw themselves at you in Peru (especially in Lima)"

Yeah, there's some of that. The taxi drivers also all double as pimps and drug dealers. If you walked up to a group of them they would start shouting, "Ride? Ride? Girls? Girls?" When you got closer they would show you fliers for prostitutes and talk their way around trying to sell you drugs.

[Edited on July 22, 2008 at 10:15 PM. Reason : ]

7/22/2008 10:13:02 PM

^nope, not mental. Macchu Picchu was #1 on my list of things to do in Peru, however time constraints leave us not seeing it this time around. And we're missing out on the Galapagos too. Oh well, this is a kind of last minute trip so that's why.

7/22/2008 10:34:57 PM

studied abroad in ecuador for 4 months and traveled all over the country. awesome place.

yeah, sucks you can't do cotopaxi. the view's amazing. plus it was cool to stand atop the volcano that might blow ecuador the hell up in a few decades.

quito...do the teleferico (skylift thing that takes you to the top of a nearby volcano and you can see all of quito)...crepes and waffles (a few locations but there's one in the mall called quicentro) and campero (located all around) were my favorite restaurants, but they weren't ecuadorian cuisine by any means. But then again, I hated typical ecuadorian cuisine, besides their desserts. mitad del mundo is cool just because it is marketed as the actual middle of the world, but if you can't make it there you're not missing out on too much. it's really touristy and actually is not where the equator goes through (i forget, i think it's about a mile off or so).

otavalo's cool. i'm sure you know about the markets. las lagunas de mojanda are some really cool lakes a short taxi ride away from the center of town. they're really cool looking and there's some neat hiking you can do around there. if you have time, i'd hit those up. i took my parents there when they came down for a few days, and they loved it.

i never went to puerto lopez, but you should go whale watching if you can. portoviejo i never went to either.

if you have time to stop by banos, misahualli, montanita, do it. those are my favorite places on earth.

and if you're not going to machu picchu, you're nuts. i've never been there, but that is at the very top of my list of future travel destinations.

oh, and if you can afford to get a lonely planet guide, those books are amazing. they're a huge help and totally worth it. they have everything you would ever need to know and have maps and the layout is very user-friendly.

7/22/2008 10:47:09 PM

^cool thx for the info. yeh, we got the lonely planet books for both ecuador and peru.

7/23/2008 9:17:25 AM

double.

[Edited on July 23, 2008 at 9:23 AM. Reason : ..]

7/23/2008 9:23:16 AM