Peru Summary

May 7, 2025

This country is insanely steep! Every mountain has a road up and over it, which is both convenient and terrifying. This is where food started to be tasty again, and the people are were mostly very nice and helpful. This is also where wild camping felt safe again. There is so much to see here that we need to go back at least two more times. We saw NONE of the ruins Peru is famous for, not a single one…

Days in Country: 27!

Miles Driven: 3566

Nights spent indoors: 11, 8 of which were spent at work in Lima

Things we weren’t expecting:

For a country that brags about its llamas, we saw very, very few of them, wild or domesticated. This was our first real Andes experience, and it was mind blowing. Their size and their drama is hard to describe. And they are full of the craziest roads. Super steep, terrifyingly narrow, a million switchbacks, and all of them are barley paved shelfs. We managed to be on one of these roads for two straight weeks!

Peru is also where people start using spices on their food again, so everything is extremely flavorful. Except the pork. All of the pork was exceptionally salty. You can also drive from sea level to 15,000ft in two to three hours. There is a lot of local road trip culture, which we haven’t seen in a long time.

And of course, Lima was incredible! Parts of it looked and felt exactly like Paris. It had really fun and trendy areas with great food and culture. There was a textile mill district, which was wild. It is such a large, modern city with a massive amount of industry and culture mixed together. Which was a very stark contrast to rural Peru, which was very low tech, mud brick, and remote.

Things we didn’t enjoy:

There is so much trash everywhere. People just throw it out of their vehicles while they’re driving. It sucks. The urban drivers are so aggressive, they crowded us to the point where two drivers hit us, and then yelled at us about it. Not our favorite, but glad they truck has such big tires and rock rails so we sustained no damage either time. The other drivers weren’t as lucky.

Some things we recommend:

Lima: Specifically the Miraflores neighbor hood is very beautiful, walkable, and full of art and good food.