8-Day Enigmas of Peru Tour

Exceptional service, very small crowds, and they handled all of the details for us. We would definitely book with Vipac again.

perfect tour. great English speaking guides with vast knowledge of.history and cilture. a Rep and driver met us on every intetaction point. exceeded expectations!

A very professionally run tour, everything went to plan. All our guides were very experienced and knowledgeable and kept you informed of tour times and information for the following days plans. Definitely 5 stars to our tour guides. You need to be aware that while this tour is exceptional for its locations, it is very busy with some very early starts. If flying home directly from Cusco, we recommend that you take another day to unwind before heading home or moving on to your next location as we didn’t get back to our hotel until after 9 pm after seeing Machu Picchu. We felt that the hotels at Paracas and Sacred Valley were of a high standard. However we feel the hotels at Lima and Cusco were below what we expected. We can definitely recommend this tour.

First off, I want to be very clear that this is the tip of trip that I do not do. Lots of moving pieces, lots of coordination, all having to be completed as planned in order for everything to come off. You ride buses, trains, vans, and have to coordinate an internal flight from Lima to Cusco and back. So, while I loved the itinerary, i was very apprehensive about how it would be executed. Everything would have to go perfectly to make it work....and it did! VIPAC did an extraordinary job putting this all together, even customizing it to add a side trip in Lima. All of their drivers were great, as were the guides. All communications were through WhatsApp, and it worked flawlessly, even notifying me of a potential flight issue due to a planned temporary closure at the Cusco Airport. Expedia never bothered to notify me (the internal flight is your responsibility to schedule) of the resulting schedule change, and I was the one who notified them of the airport closure. The itinerary was great, with historical tours of Lima and Cuzco, a bucket list tour of Machu Picchu and a number of other famous archaeological sites in the Sacred Valley, the Nazca Lines, and a short boat ride to the Ballestas Islands to see sea lions, penguins, etc. If you can work it out, another day in Paracas would be nice, with the Pacific Ocean right there, it was a great interlude between Lima and Cusco. Quick note that the Nazca Lines flight is on a very small (10-12 seater) plane, and half the folks on our flight got air sick, most likely due to the hairpin, banking turns employed by the pilot in order to give both sides of the plane a view of the figures. Not sure if this was done to save time or add to the excitement, but that ratio of poor folks who had to do the walk of shame off of the plane with their little bags of vomit is probably excessive. The seas for the boat ride were modest and nobody got sick on that tour. Besides the great itinerary, there was also plenty of time relax and catch your breath, or fit in some extra stuff on the side. As for physical fitness, I made the questionable choice of engaging in this tour while recovering from a back injury and with a torn meniscus that made taking stairs a bit of an ordeal. And there are a lot of stairs on this tour lol. I survived it no worse for wear, but if stairs are an issue for you keep this in mind. As for the issues with the altitude (a good portion of the trip is at over 12,000 feet, more than twice the elevation of Denver), i took Diamox, my son did not. Neither of us experienced any altitude issues, even though we live and work at close to sea level. On the whole, I am guessing while keeping the aforementioned stair issue in mind, that most folks will physically be able to do this tour without any major issues. The accommodations we had (Sol de Oro Lima, Novotel Cusco, La Hacienda Bahia Paracas, and La Casona de Yucay), were all amazing, with great customer service, outstanding restaurants and very nice rooms. The vans used by VIPAC were all spacious and clean and in good working order. In closing, I am the type of person that takes a year to plan a trip, and am a control freak over every detail--which is why I tend to prefer trips with as few moving parts as possible. But VIPAC did such an outstanding job, handling everything flawlessly, that I without reservation recommend them for anyone looking for a bucket list trip to Peru!

Excellent organization, super friendly treatment, are in all the details for the trip to enjoy fully. They respond quickly to doubts or unexpected and resolve effectively. They accompany you from the moment you arrive and say goodbye only when they see that you enter the boarding area. Super recommended.