25 Oct 2018
Fist off- if you think this trip is a part of a tour group, it is not. If you are not comfortable being on your own most of the time with absolutely no English translators (except on each specific site tour) this is not the trip for you
2nd- if you are the kind of person that likes to know your schedule of where to go at what time and with tickets in-hand well ahead of time (like at least 24 hours before each day), then this trip is not for you
3rd - If you like being at the hands of a 3rd party who's sole job is to book your bus/train tickets and various tours for you- then provide the logistics of time/place/tickets just prior to you doing anything for that day. Or if you like working person-to-person with the tour companies to get money back for failed tours or tour guides that leave without you for no reason. Skip this one
Basically- skip this tour and go to the next one.
My wife and I travel A LOT. We typically have a busy schedule when we travel (ie lots of tours - at least 1 per day- over various countries). This itinerary is too aggressive. We were at the hands of public transportation the whole time (think Greyhound bus for many of the days). The trip from Lima to Nazca was 9 hours! 9!!! Traffic wll get you, construction will get you- oh, and since we didn't know it was going to be 9 hours, we didn't pack anything more than snacks. We left too early for breakfast (snack 1) and didn't have any time for lunch (snack 2). So basically 5:30 AM - 4:30 PM on route to the bus or on the bus. Not at all fun
The most frustrating part of the bus\air travel is that most of the time either the person who was supposed to pick us up showed up late with no signs (they just walked around looking for us and asking if I was John) or they simply didn't show up. We walked to our hotels in Nazca and in Aqua Cliente, we almost scheduled alternative transportation on our flight in to Lima (40 min late) and Puno-to-Cusco (40 min late). Pretty frustrating when no one is available to be your translator to find out what is going on.
I spent about $100 in phone/data plan communicating to this travel company trying to determine what was going on, where people were, refunds on tours that either didn't happen or the tour guide left without us.
The 3-star hotels are 3-star for Peru, not for US/CA. If you are from US or CA or even EU- drop the star rating by 1 star. The hotels were nice overall, but the noise level in all of them was an issue. The service at the one in Cusco was absolutely horrific (the one in Lima was superb- but the sheets were a bit damp due to very high humidity).
Basically, the sites were awesome- you should see them. But for THIS tour group there was far too much bad that far outweighed the good. I don't know what trip the other folks who rated this trip were on, but they were NOT on this one if it is above 3 stars. I invite you to look at my other ratings I have done on Trip Advisor. I rarely, if ever, have a long and ranting bad experience. I hope this tells you something about this specific tour- don't do it.
The one positive thing is that the majority of the time, the tour group would answer your phone or texts. They met with us in Cusco to clear up some confusion (of where there was a ton of it each day).