We are just a few days from our two-week trip to Peru and Mexico! So I thought I share our itinerary and preparation steps.

Itinerary

Here’s our itinerary: We’re going to go directly to Cusco, spend 6 days over there, then take an overnight bus to Arequipa, spend 2 days there, and then fly to Lima, and spend the last 2 days of Peru there. We then fly to Mexico city, and spend 3 days over there. We wanted to go to the Amazon, but decided not to, due to the (non-existent) risk of malaria and zika there. Perhaps we are overly conscious, but we just didn’t want to risk it.

I ended up planning pretty much everything ahead of time, as we don’t have much time in this trip, and we’re going to cover a lot of ground. I wished we had more time to be a bit more spontaneous over there.

In Cusco, we will first stay in the Sacred Valley, both for acclimatization, and for the ease of access to different sites. Among the places we are going to visit are Pisac, Moray, Maras, Ollantaytambo (yup, try pronouncing that!), and of course Machu Picchu. We more or less know which day we want to do what. For Machu Picchu, of course, there is a different story. I’ll write about the preparation steps after we visited.

Preparation

We decided to go as light as possible, having each a ~40L backpack, which is plenty. This way, we don’t need to check in any bags, and we can take buses a lot easier. We are going to pack fewer clothes, and wash them a few times over there. This is the mandatory backpacking shot:

Photography gear

  • Sony A6300 (see below)
  • Sony 10-18mm (fantastic UWA lens)
  • Sigma 30mm 1.4 (sharp and has great bokeh)
  • Sony 50mm 1.8 (I wish it was faster, but it’s OK)
  • 4 batteries
  • Lowepro Passport Slingshot (the one from India!)

6 years ago (wow!), when I went to India, I took my Canon 5D, two manual focus Voigtlander lenses and an 85mm 1.8 lens with me. The total weight of that gear was almost 2 kg, whereas now I only haul around a mere 1.1 kg! The difference might sound small, but on a daily basis, it makes a big difference. Another reason I decided to go with the Sony is that the lenses are all autofocus, and this time around, I’m not focusing as much on portrait photography (not that I wouldn’t take portraits).

A few anecdotes

  • There is something called “Gringo tax” for domestic flights (and basically for everything else you pay substantially more as a tourist). Apparently for some routes, there are special classes for Peruvians that are significantly cheaper. I understand that, and it’s fine with me. But you would guess when you’re buying those flights, the website would tell you that, right? But it doesn’t. You (obviously) buy the cheap Econo class tickets, and then in the airport you are faced with a “fine” of $178 per person, per flight leg! Fortunately, I learned about this earlier, so I had to call and change my ticket to Flex, otherwise we would have got those ridiculous fines.

  • For photography nerds: I ended up buying Sony A6300! I was tempted to buy the full frame Sony A7 (for around the same price), but after a lot of back and forth, I decided not to. I could write a whole blog post about the pros and cons of each, but in the end my decision came to the fact that 1) FF lenses are significantly more expensive and heavier/bulkier and I didn’t even have any, 2) the only real difference between the two systems would have been when doing portraits with 85mm 1.8 lens on A7, versus 50mm 1.8 on A6300. Granted, the 85mm would have given me a shallower DOF and better bokeh, but I couldn’t justify the extra $$$ and weight/bulk. But you might ask, wait a second, why did you buy A6300 when you had the NEX-6? Well, the A6300 has a far better AF and Auto ISO system (that help in getting more keeper shots), and has a slightly better noise performance (though still not as good as my 12 year old Canon 5D!) and resolution (which comes handy for cropping/printing). Would it justify paying $800 more? No comment. :