Trip of a life time: Peru, Bolivia and Chile in 3 weeks!

My 3 weeks of traveling with my dear "little sister" Livia from Paris, France was ready to start on mid-January when Livia arrived to Lima. The planning had started long, long before  since we wanted to see and do lots and only had 3 weeks! Good planning served us well, since the trip in total was a success and we saw so many cool places. At the same time we also realised that there are so many cool places we didn't have time to see so hopefully more traveling in South America!

So our travel started with obvious choice in Peru, that is Cusco and Machu Picchu. For me only Cusco since I had already been to Machu Picchu last October. Livia spent amazing 2 days visiting surroundings of Aguas Calientes and Machu Picchu, while I tried to get use to the altitude and enjoyed really sunny days in Cusco. So don't believe what people say that it always rains there in January! We did have some heavy thunderstorms but luckily only at night.

Our traveling continued with a flight to La Paz, Bolivia. In La Paz we stayed quite near the Witches markets. Of course we had to check them out and get some souvenirs.

Next morning we continued to 2 days to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana. It is amazingly beautiful there! Our day was full with a trip to Isla del Sol and a small hike there. We came back to Cobacabana just in time to enjoy a local beer and watch the sun set.

Lake Titicaca - Isla del Sol, Bolivia

Next morning we continued exploring Copacabana with a day tour. We had enough time to visit the floating islands of Bolivia, but unfortunately the boat drivers wanted full boats and there were not enough tourists around. Anyway I've heard that they are much nicer when visited from Peru side, so just need to add that to my list of "things to visit in Peru" :).

Travel from Copacabana back to La Paz takes all together about 4 hours: first about an hour to the ferry, off from the bus and to a small boat (they have separate boats for people and cars), then another 2,5 hours to La Paz. That evening we tried a pizza place really close to our hotel (recommended by Lonely Planet) since we were too tired and lazy to find anything else and actually it was really nice! Also managed to see my friend Dan, whom I met in Quito at New Year!

The next morning we wanted to see Plaza de Armas and explore the center, which actually turned out to be impossible. Some sort of get-together with South American presidents were suppose to happen that day so the whole area was closed. But we think we saw a president (or must have been someone really important) from Brazil :)!!

Then it was time to move on and our next flight took us to Uyuni, Bolivia, which is a very busy town as you can see from the picture below (not!!!).

Very busy "city" of Uyuni, Bolivia

The picture is lousy,
but so was the "croque monsieur"!!

Our hotel was a perfect little oasis! In Uyuni it was a little bit difficult to find a place where to eat. Well, there were pizzerias everywhere but this night we wanted something different. The hotel suggested Le Loco so we decided to wait while it opened. We finally got there and since it was owned by French, I though I'd try their croque monsieur which I love in Paris. Well, I must admit, it had nothing to do with croque monsieur and it was the worst of a kind I'd ever eaten!! But the wine and french fries were good :).

Since there was really nothing else to do in town, our hotel had a collection of DVD's so we watched one and had a really good night sleep before heading to Salar de Uyuni next day!


Our pickup was on time (yey!!) and our guide was nice Peruvian guy. Our tour was 3 days and 2 nights from Uyuni through Salar de Uyuni, Boliviia and ending to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Almost all tours are similar but so many reviews have comments about drunk drivers so we were a bit cautious. But our tour and guide/driver was perfect! He only spoke Spanish, but we understood each other perfectly (at least so we think!).

First night we stayed in a really cool salt hotel and the second one up at 4600 meters! I admit that  I had quite a bad headache because on the second hotel because of altitude but they had oxygen available, which helped!

As you can see from the pics, it was pretty amazing!

Salt lakes, lagunas with flamingos and llamas,
aaah so pretty!

And of course the goofy pictures :D!

This trip ended to Chilean city of San Pedro de Atacama, where we changed from cold to warm. Until San Pedro lots of warm clothes were needed but now all these could be packed away and we could enjoy the summer again :)!

San Pedro de Atacama is super cute little city. It is quite touristic but still really nice and friendly. From there we did 2 trips, first one to Moon Valley and second one to Tatio geysers. Ok, I was wrong. We couldn't pack our warm clothes just yes, since we left to Tatio geysers really early in the morning and when arriving to our first stop it was rrrrrrrrreally cold, but oh so beautiful! And we did take a dip in the hot laguna :)

Valle de la Luna, Chile

Tatio Geysirs, Chile

Next 2 days we spent in Santiago. I liked Santiago a lot, perhaps it was because we did a super nice free walking tour around the city with Franco (who knows everything from student life to history!) or maybe it was because of that yammy lucuma-chocolate ice cream I had or maybe it was the wine tour - Viña del Mar - Valparaiso tour we did or Pablo Neruda's interesting houses and stories or maybe it was just all that above. Definitely I want to come back to Santiago one day!

Santiago, Chile

Then the highlight for our tour, at least it was for Livia :), Rapa Nui, i.e. Easter Islands! We had the biggest surprise when we checked into our flight, we were in business class, yippeee :)! Not sure if it was a mistake, but we didn't care and enjoyed our 5 hour flight! Arrived to hot and humid (almost like Lima) Hanga Roa, that is the capital of Easter Island. We had almost 4 days to enjoy the island. Of course we wanted to see all the Moai's and everything this amazing island had to offer us. I think I will let the pictures speak the thousand words....

Easter Island, Chile

After arriving to Lima from Easter Island through Santiago we still had almost 2 full days in Lima. First day just strolling around Barranco and Lima Centro. Livia's last day in Lima was spent visiting worlds 2nd largest cemetery in Lima "Nueva Esperanza" and also pueblos jovenes in Manchay.

Lima: Barranco, Nueva Esperanza, Manchay

Gracias, mi amiga Livia <3, for this amazing trip!