Instead of flying to Cusco from Lima we took buses. Why? Mostly because I was scared of altitude sickness and had read it was better to slowly acclimatize. Cusco is at 11,200 feet while Lima is at sea level. The summit of Mt Hood in my home state of Oregon is 11,239. Only 39 ft higher!

In addition to avoiding sickness, the buses would let us explore lots more of the country. I chose PeruHop since it was easy. They picked us up at our accommodation, provided an English speaking guide, included a few fun stops and allowed us to book one ticket for the whole trip. We took 7 days to get to Cusco.

Our first stop of the day was Paracas. It was a barren desert all the way to the coast. There is normally incredible wildlife on a few islands offshore but sadly the tour boats weren’t running due to the weather. The fog made everything look otherworldly.

We spent the night in Huacachina. It’s a little village in an incredible desert oasis with sand dunes all around. This was a highlight of the trip for me.

The next bus ride took us to the Nazca lines. These are hard to photograph the scale of but picture football field-sized figures drawn in the desert rocks. Now imagine the figures are between 1500-2500 years old. Then we took an overnight bus to Arequipa. A stop for an evening wine tasting and large dinner made the bus ride not that bad. Arequipa was a gorgeous historic town surrounded by volcanoes.

After a few days in Arequipa (7,546ft) we felt strong and ready to tackle the higher elevation. Our bus drove us up to Puno with sitings of vicuña and viscacha along the way. We stopped for a stretch and potty break at Lagunillas (14,580). I felt weak but overall ok. We had some coca tea just in case. However, the altitude hit me as we arrived in Puno (12,565). I fainted on a street corner and spent the next few days in bed feeling horrible. A doctor visited, reassuring me I wasn’t dying and giving me 4 kinds of pills to combat this sickness, but I didn’t have an enjoyable time.

After two horrible nights in Puno, we finally headed for Cusco. Cusco is a bit lower so between that, the altitude medication and time to acclimatize I should have felt better. I was well enough to slowly walk around the main sites and eat plain chicken with rice.

While I still got altitude sickness, I am glad we took the long route to Cusco. Arequipa was my favorite city in Peru, the coast and desert oasis unique, and the animals interesting. The guides on each bus made sure we knew where to go and they helped take care of me when I got sick. If I did it again, I might pick a route that avoided the very high elevation of Puno or just take altitude medication in advance 🙂