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ThetaOmnikron posted:Ok, am going to have ~10 days in Peru at the end of December– what's a rough breakdown of how my time would be best spent? Is the Inca Trail worth 4 days, or something experienced travelers scoff at? To me, Juaraz and Lago Titicaca were the best parts of my month long foray into that country. Cuzco was pleasant, and visiting the Saksaywaman (sexywoman) on horseback was fun too. Can't forget about visiting the bottom of Colca Canyon too, very awesome relaxing atmosphere. Try taking a dip in one of the blue lagoons in the Cordillera Negra/Blanca and feel rejuvenated by the freezing cold! I took part of the Inca trail in Aguas Calientes (Macchu Picchu), and it was decent enough.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:27
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:To me, Juaraz and Lago Titicaca were the best parts of my month long foray into that country. Cuzco was pleasant, and visiting the Saksaywaman (sexywoman) on horseback was fun too. Can't forget about visiting the bottom of Colca Canyon too, very awesome relaxing atmosphere. Try taking a dip in one of the blue lagoons in the Cordillera Negra/Blanca and feel rejuvenated by the freezing cold! Got it. I guess I'm trying to figure out 1) if the Gringo trail is the best use of my time (haven't been to Peru before), and if so, how best to spend the days across it best.
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Sep 29, 2014 16:56
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:To me, Juaraz and Lago Titicaca were the best parts of my month long foray into that country. Cuzco was pleasant, and visiting the Saksaywaman (sexywoman) on horseback was fun too. Can't forget about visiting the bottom of Colca Canyon too, very awesome relaxing atmosphere. Try taking a dip in one of the blue lagoons in the Cordillera Negra/Blanca and feel rejuvenated by the freezing cold! With 10 days, you probably won't have time to do more than the Sacred Valley circuit + Titicaca. This isn't a bad thing... It's just a concentration of cool stuff that you'd have to travel pretty far from to see other parts of the country. I thought the Huaraz/Juaraz/Caraz area was pretty cool, but being from Colorado I wasn't as blown away with the mountain vistas and hiking opportunities as a lot of people visiting from other areas. The Sacred Valley is obviously Peru's crown jewel, but for my #2 I'd say the north of the country, particularly Chachapoyas and the nearby Kuelap ruins. No tourists and tons of cool stuff everywhere. Edit: if you want an alternative to the Inca trail, you could use those days to explore the sacred valley and its towns/ruins. I haven't done the trail so I can't comment on it, but I'm glad we spent three days in the valley. We did a night in Pisac and two in Ollantaytambo. Cool ruins and towns to explore in both places and not crowded once the day tourist busses have come and gone. You can than catch the train from Ollanta to see MP. Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Sep 29, 2014 |
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Sep 29, 2014 16:58
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ThetaOmnikron posted:Ok, am going to have ~10 days in Peru at the end of December– what's a rough breakdown of how my time would be best spent? Is the Inca Trail worth 4 days, or something experienced travelers scoff at? Depends on how much you like hiking/backpacking. We did the "two-day" Inca Trail (with http://www.llamapath.com/) which was really a train ride to the last section of hiking early in the morning, hiking all day to the Sun Gate, then staying in Aguas Calientes overnight before exploring MP proper the next morning.
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Sep 29, 2014 19:23
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If you're on a tight time budget, I probably wouldn't recommend the two day Inca trail, when you could just go straight to machu picchu and spend the extra day doing Maras or Pisac both of which can be done as a day trip from Cusco (leaving early) and are probably more interesting/varied. If you hike up the ruins in Pisac it's a great little challenge, probably as steep in places as anywhere on the Inca trail (you can cheat and get a taxi down from the top at the end).
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Sep 29, 2014 20:16
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TheImmigrant posted:Yeah, for every expat I've encountered who is happy with a little piece of paradise in a place like Dominical, I've met the same number who've been completely jacked on real estate deals with Ticos. Yea I'm not too worried about squatters or anything like that since this move would essentially be a total relocation. I've also heard good and bad things about the locales. I guess it just depends on the persons you're dealing with. I'm living in Abu Dhabi right now making/saving a whole lot of cash. The plan is to move down to CR with some capital, rent for a bit(less than a year), figure out exactly where we wanna buy and then pull the trigger. In the meantime my wife would teach for a meager income. From what we've read, I think we've ruled out Panama and Belize is English speaking which is unattractive. I haven't heard a lot about the other 4. Since we want to open a tourism based business, I'm not sure if they have enough visitors to support that. Plus I figure if you're trying to go for tourists it's probably better to be in a high profile country as opposed to a locale people don't usually mention in case the economy takes a dive again.
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Sep 30, 2014 16:35
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davey4283 posted:Yea I'm not too worried about squatters or anything like that since this move would essentially be a total relocation. I've also heard good and bad things about the locales. I guess it just depends on the persons you're dealing with. Why did you rule out Panama? I'd buy property there before buying in CR. Panama is friendlier to foreign investment, and the attractive spots aren't as overdeveloped as they are in CR. Nicaragua is excellent value too - amazingly cheap. CR is Latin America Lite. It's pleasant, but I like neighboring countries much more. I'm in a similar spot, working a two-year contract in India and saving heaps. I'd like to come back and buy a boat and property, either in Panama or Colombia. If you have time, check out Capurgana and Sapzurro in Colombia. Paradise.
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Sep 30, 2014 17:24
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Is anyone familiar with the border crossings between Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru? How strict are they about their rules? I'm in a little bit of a bind here. I'm in Colombia. My passport expires in 5 months. The visa requirements for Ecuador and Peru require at least 6 months left on my passport. I can't renew my passport since this is a replacement. My flight is out of Lima. I'm contacting the US embassy about the possibility of extending my passport. How screwed am I?
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Oct 4, 2014 18:54
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Well you can certainly leave the country but getting into another one is dubious at best. Can you
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Oct 4, 2014 19:35
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Just booked the Inca trail with Alpaca Expeditions for December 21st through the 24th. Flying in on the 18th to Cusco, flying to Lima on the 25th, and then flying back to LA on the 28th. No specific plans. Probably going to AirBnB it. Curious about staying at the hot springs on the night of the 24th. Any recommendations or information welcome on either city. Thanks! Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Oct 5, 2014 |
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Oct 5, 2014 03:24
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So after enough inquiry I am status: screwed. A few important details I left out earlier. I've been penalized for losing my passport so many times (3 in the past 5 years) and I won't be re-issued a passport for another year unless I repeal it. If I lose this passport then I get a 48 hour passport to leave the country then and there. Welp.
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Oct 5, 2014 21:49
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Engin3 posted:So after enough inquiry I am status: screwed. A few important details I left out earlier. I've been penalized for losing my passport so many times (3 in the past 5 years) and I won't be re-issued a passport for another year unless I repeal it. If I lose this passport then I get a 48 hour passport to leave the country then and there. Maybe your airline will take pity on you and let you change your flight without the normal fees.
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Oct 5, 2014 22:20
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How do you lose your passport 3 times in 5 years?
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Oct 6, 2014 17:59
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I've had the same passport for ten loving years 
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Oct 6, 2014 19:51
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He got fired from the CIA.
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Oct 6, 2014 20:05
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Oh I've just had a few hiccups over the years. I lost one while moving across the country. One got stolen at knifepoint. This one was picked up out of my dorm room along with a bit of cash. I was out of my mind sick and left my locker unlocked. I got my flight switched over to Medellin with a minimal charge. It's annoying because I had projects lined up in Ecuador and Peru. I guess I'll just spend time going to the more remote places in Colombia like Choco and the Amazon.
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Oct 7, 2014 16:22
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What parts of Ecuador were you going to visit?
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Oct 7, 2014 19:10
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That wasn't entirely planned out. I was going to be around Nueva Loja and north of Quito for two weeks each. I figured a few hikes, Mindo, and Banos would happen but everything else would be found out along the way.
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Oct 7, 2014 19:49
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Mindo is awesome. I live in the Andes myself, I really prefer the mountains to the coast
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Oct 7, 2014 20:42
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Yeah same. As soon as I hit Santa Marta I took my first chance up to Minca and the mountains to escape the heat. I was pretty excited about Ecuador and Peru but with my current schedule it would have been rushed. I'll probably set sights on Ecuador and Peru next winter and take it a little bit more slowly than I would have. Really bummed I'm missing out on alpacas and Cordilleria Blanc.
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Oct 8, 2014 00:15
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Engin3 posted:Yeah same. As soon as I hit Santa Marta I took my first chance up to Minca and the mountains to escape the heat. You're talking North American winter right? Won't it be raining pretty impressively during that time?
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Oct 8, 2014 00:45
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I kinda like the aesthetic of off season. It's rainy season for much of Colombia right now and I haven't found any difficulties. Granted, it's not as easy to travel in unpleasant weather but it doesn't disrupt me too much.
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Oct 8, 2014 01:55
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Engin3 posted:Yeah same. As soon as I hit Santa Marta I took my first chance up to Minca and the mountains to escape the heat. Yea, Huaraz was one of my favorite parts of Peru. It really is an indescribably beautiful place. You just have to be in good shape to get around those mountains 
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Oct 8, 2014 13:46
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Engin3 posted:Yeah same. As soon as I hit Santa Marta I took my first chance up to Minca and the mountains to escape the heat. My wife and I really enjoyed our time in Ibarra. Really mellow little town (100k residents and capital of Imbabura province) with great ice cream and surrounded by volcanoes. Close to Otavalo if you want to see the giant market there. There's a great market to eat breakfast/lunch at in Ibarra and a solid pizza joint too.  e- There is a great little bar called Gong Arte (Av Atahualpa 17-102) that has live music on Friday nights, and serves some craft beer and artisanal liquors. khysanth fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Oct 9, 2014 |
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Oct 8, 2014 20:23
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Any goons going to be in the Cartagena area, mid December?
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Oct 9, 2014 06:32
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From a very rough look at this I can see that this is mostly a forum for travel in South America. Can anyone here give me an idea of where is best to look for looking for a English teaching job in South America/Central America? I have posted on a few groups on facebook asking for information but got no answers back. The normal jobs websites for ESL teachers are flooded with jobs for Asia but next to nothing for South/central america. Can anyone shed any light on where I should be looking?
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Oct 13, 2014 17:58
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SqueakyDuck posted:From a very rough look at this I can see that this is mostly a forum for travel in South America. Mexico is a good bet. There's work in cities like Mexico City, Guadalajara, Merida, etc. You'd probably want to avoid the northern states, especially Tamaulipas and Sinaloa and anything near the US border. You won't get rich, but you can easily survive, even if you're strictly freelance. I taught private lessons in Mexico City for $5-10/hour. Chile is another good bet, safer than Mexico, but more expensive. Argentina used to be a good option, but the country's neverending malaise might mean times have changed. Uruguay is really open to foreigners, and I'd be surprised if there isn't good ESL work there. Uruguay is also an awesome little pocket country. Generally, ESL in Latin America is something you arrange after arrival. Plan on dodgy visa situations and a lot of private lessons. If you have pedagogical training or ESL/linguistics experience, you'll be more marketable at international schools or universities
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Oct 13, 2014 18:56
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SqueakyDuck posted:From a very rough look at this I can see that this is mostly a forum for travel in South America. My wife is an esl teacher and we are planning on moving to central america in the near future. There is a 2 day job fair held in Iowa every year. You have to pay a couple hundred bucks to attend but the majority of people that go leave the fair with a job. If you live in the Midwest it might be worth looking into or maybe they have something like it in your area. http://www.uni.edu/placement/overseas/osfair.html
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Oct 13, 2014 19:02
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How easy is it to travel around Ecuador? In January I'll be going to Colombia for about 5 weeks but haven't booked a return flight yet. A cheap flight from Quito has opened up and I'm considering spending the last week there. Any tips?
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Oct 14, 2014 14:04
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Really easy. Buses connect most cities and are super cheap. If you want to get someplace faster you can hire a private car/taxi.
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Oct 14, 2014 20:03
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khysanth posted:Really easy. Buses connect most cities and are super cheap. If you want to get someplace faster you can hire a private car/taxi. Pretty much this. Adding to that, but Ecuador uses the dollar, and because of our decent oil wealth transportation costs are pretty low.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:04
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Third time to Colombia, first time to Cartagena. Besides sipping cocktails by the beach, pretending I'm in Miami, what in the city is there that I should try, day trips etc? I'm there for 9 days and it looks like it's too far too make a day trip to Caracas (or hell, the Venezuela border) by about 18 hours Nearest I can tell, the antipode of Christmas Island is about 45 min SE of Cartagena
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Oct 27, 2014 22:31
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Hadlock posted:Third time to Colombia, first time to Cartagena. Besides sipping cocktails by the beach, pretending I'm in Miami, what in the city is there that I should try, day trips etc? I'm there for 9 days and it looks like it's too far too make a day trip to Caracas (or hell, the Venezuela border) by about 18 hours I left Cartagena for Santa Marta pretty quickly, it was a bad combo of pusher-men and touristiness. Then I spent every day either in the Rainforests or laying on the beach in Taganga eating fresh caught fish.
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Nov 2, 2014 01:17
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Taganga sounds right up my alley and Santa Marta more my speed. Looks like you're not far from the rain forest; how did you get in and out of the forest?
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Nov 2, 2014 07:09
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Hadlock posted:Taganga sounds right up my alley and Santa Marta more my speed. Looks like you're not far from the rain forest; how did you get in and out of the forest? We went to Tayrona National Park by bus, then hiked into a few different campgrounds. There is also boat service to one of the camps (El Cabo). There's a couple of trecks/trails up into the rainforest from the beaches, including a day-hikable trip to some ruins.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:24
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Leaving for Cusco/Lima in about 5 weeks to be there over Christmas. For Lima, we're staying in Miraflores right by the water, about 2 blocks from Larcomar. I'm still looking for suggestions on things to do and places to eat. I'm also interested in people's Machu Picchu experiences. We went with Alpaca Expeditions due to a personal recommendation by an acquaintance. They couldn't get us Huyana Picchu, so they recommended Machu Picchu mountain at a $50 cost. My lady friend and I are trying to figure out if it's worth it, but we're leaning towards saving the money as we will have spent the last 4 days hiking. It's hard for me to conceive that spending more money to hike even longer would be a good value. If we don't hike the mountain, will we have enough to do to fill our time? If we do hike the mountain, will we feel pressed for time to explore the ruins? Edit: Just a note: holy poo poo, Lima has Uber. It's under $10 USD to get to Miraflores from the airport. I guess this means I'll have to get a local SIM card for my phone. Blinkman987 fucked around with this message at 09:54 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 05:42
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Blinkman987 posted:We went with Alpaca Expeditions due to a personal recommendation by an acquaintance. They couldn't get us Huyana Picchu, so they recommended Machu Picchu mountain at a $50 cost. My lady friend and I are trying to figure out if it's worth it, but we're leaning towards saving the money as we will have spent the last 4 days hiking. It's hard for me to conceive that spending more money to hike even longer would be a good value. If we don't hike the mountain, will we have enough to do to fill our time? If we do hike the mountain, will we feel pressed for time to explore the ruins? We hiked Machu Picchu Mountain, but it was FREE when we did it a few years ago (as was Huayna Picchu). I hadn't even really heard of it, we just saw it and decided to start hiking. I guess they've figured out how to monetize everything now. It's amazing how expensive everything to do with Machu Picchu is. We travelled throughout the country on the very cheap, and then we hit the ruins and our shoe-string budget exploded. Everything there is 20x the cost of the rest of the country: Train to Aguas Calientes, bus ride up to the ruins, entrance ticket to the ruins, and now extra fees to climb the mountains. Also, even though we had our Sacred Valley pass on a student discount, but they wouldn't accept this as proof for the Machu Picchu entrance (you specifically needed an international student ID). With that said, the mountain is really cool. The view from the top is either spectacular (as we had) or zero visability due to clouds, depending on the weather. We didn't hike in, so this was our only hike portion. I might have been hiked out if we had done one of the expeditions. It's fairly strenuous and steep--give yourself three hours round trip. If we had to pay, we probably would have cheaped out, though. We spent a long time just wandering around the ruins and stayed until 4:00, almost until it closed. Probably stayed six hours total (didn't get there super early). Sneak in some food and water.
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Nov 10, 2014 18:02
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Thesaurus posted:... It's amazing how expensive everything to do with Machu Picchu is. ... I can't remember if I posted this in this thread before, but seeing those ruins was by far the most expensive day I've ever spent as a tourist, and I've seen almost all of western Europe. Insanely, insanely expensive.
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Nov 11, 2014 01:44
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Macchu Picchu makes up something like half a percent (the exact number is closer to 0.63%) of the entire country's GDP they're wise to monetize what they have in an otherwise very poor, very remote part of the country.
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Nov 11, 2014 05:48
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I think we'll be skipping the mountain, then. I agree with the monetization. They should make it expensive to non-Peruvian tourists. I don't think that people are price sensitive when it comes to Machu Picchu. People are going to go and whether it's $600 or $700 really isn't going to matter to most. It's tough for people just trying just to experience it, but overall it's probably best if they gouge the poo poo out of people while they're in the park. As for me, I'll make sure to eat a large breakfast before the final leg of the hike and bring in some whey protein bars. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Nov 11, 2014 08:40
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