Booking Flights to Peru

This is something new for me.  You see I am normally booking flights to join a cruise.  Sure I have booked flights for land vacations.  Back to visit family, and flights with charters to Mexico.  But I have never booked flights to a foreign country where a lot of things were new to me.  

So from our earlier blog you now know we are heading to Peru for an amazing trip of a lifetime.

But first we need to buy fights to Lima.  Getting there from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has a few challenges.  

• First there are no direct flights.  
• Second it isn't cheap.  
• Third routing can be almost anywhere.  
• Fourth layovers really need to be factored in.

I love using kayak.com for my searches - but make sure to do it in an incognito window so they don't track the flights. 

One reason -- you end up seeing prices go up for flights you are looking at the next day. Companies now can track how many have looked at a particular flight, on a particular day, and routing.  Heck even cruise lines are doing this.

Our goal was to find a one way flight to Lima with only one connection, with a reputable airline, with minimal layovers for a reasonable price. A daunting task!  Or am I asking too much.

After searching various sites over a few days of travel (make sure to look at flight leaving a day or two earlier) and taking lots of notes. 

One thing we saw was great prices but the layovers were crazy.  I for one don't want a layover of 13 hours in Toronto or Mexico City.  Flights with less layovers jumped in price.  

In the end we came across a flight that got us into Lima the night before our flight to Juliaca.  

Thankfully we secured an Air Canada flight that leaves early in the morning in Vancouver with a 2 hour stop in LA, enough time to change to our Lima flight (which is more than enough because luckily we clear US customs in Vancouver and won't have to in LA). 

We then board a LATAM flight (we flew with them a few years ago to Brazil and loved them) direct from LA to Lima, Peru.  Arriving in Lima just after midnight local time.  And the price $400 US each!  

We have learned that if we find a great flight at a great price don't hesitate -- BOOK IT because there is always a chance (and we have been burned before) it won't be there at the same price later.

We then reserved a hotel right at the airport (Costa del Sol Wyndham) to crash before our flight the next day to Juliaca for our time in Puno and Lake Titicaca. 

It was hard to accept the cost of this expensive hotel ($200 night and we would only be there 9 hours) but after searching for less expensive accommodations away from the airport that certainly would of been a lot cheaper we agreed that those cheaper hotels were not going to cut it. 

This night we would need a comfortable bed that is close by.  Also not having to worry about securing transportation to and from the hotel and enabling us to rest for longer made us realize we made the right choice.