Hostel Lottery

One thing we found in many places is that the hostelworld and guidebook descriptions of hostels may have little or no relation to the actual experience at the hostel. The hostelworld description of our hostel in Bariloche (Patanuk Lake) didn't come close to describing how nice the rooms are, or the amazing view. On the other end, Hosteria Teuly in Puerto Madryn charged us more than our hostelworld reserved price, and had a terrible kitchen. We actually used our camping dishes because they had no bowls!

And Hostel Granados in Buenos Aires - might be worth mentioning that the place is over two bars. Not even good ones, and way overpriced. We hung a sleeping bag over the window to block out the light and slept with earplugs!

So the moral of the story is to get recommendations from other travelers as much as possible. And only reserve rooms if you really need to...

Peru

We spent almost a month in Peru, but didn't really see a lot of it since we were in school for most of that time.

Places:
Cusco - very touristy, but some really cool stuff to see. Old colonial churches built onto ancient inca construction were interesting studies in contrast. Pizzerias built onto the same foundations were too :) A cool place to spend a few days. Be very careful of taxis, they will hit you!!!

Pisac & Urubamba - very neat little villages, much easier to get off the tourist track a little bit. The ruins at Pisac are well worth the hike.

Ollantaytambo - on the way to Macchu Piccu, not much else positive to say. VERY touristy... The Fortress looked cool from below, but we didn't have time to check it out.

Salineras - great hike from Urubamba, it's an old salt 'mine' that has been in use since before the incas. The trail will feel hard until you get passed by a 7-year-old donkey herder at a run!

Moray - another inca ruin. The books claim it was an experimental nursery, but the main site looks like an amphitheater and has amazing acoustics. Details of our day and pics on the main mobyfiles site.

Macchu Piccu - wow! See below for some ramblings about the trek.


The Rest:
Amigos Spanish School - highly recommended. Great teachers, friendly staff, not too expensive, and they introduced us to Marina & Family! The school organizes homestay with local families, which is a great way to learn about the 'real' Peru and practice your Spanish. Our family (Marina, Carlos & sons) were the highlight of our stay in Cusco. Very friendly, great food, nice rooms, ... If you're doing homestay thru Amigos try to request them. We were the only students staying with a family, so no other families to compare to...

Pizza - seems to be a specialty in Cusco, our fave was a little place near the main street. Forgot the name (have a picture someplace, will try to add it here) but if you walk along Av. del Sol towards the Plaza des Armas to the end (T intersection at the big white building) and then turn left, it's on your left at the far end of the street. Little place, with a few benches and a brick oven on the right-hand wall. The front wall is original inca stonework.

Local busses - must-do, it feels a lot more real travelling in an old bus with llamas in the cargo hold than a tour company minibus.

Q'ente tours - we did the 'Lares Valley' trek, and it had some real highs and lows.

• PRO
  
• beautiful valley, very few other tourists
• visit to local family farm, felt like stepping back in time 500 years - probably the trip highlight
• very knowlegable guide, both in dealing with the locals and at Macchu Piccu
• small, pretty well matched group - we were pretty worried about this before our pre-trek meeting
• CON
• poor choice of campsites - the first night was in a filthy farmyard, the second was in the middle of a village in a vacant lot. Both times there were better options within 30 minutes walk.
• poor pre-trek briefing
  
• no mention about needing our passports for almost everything near M.P. - we got by with photocopies but it was a major hassle
• Lots of pressure to rent extraneous gear from the tour company
  
• widely varied and inacurate info about water supplies
• NO DRINKING WATER! Our brochure said in one place that water would be provided, and in another that it might require a small additional payment. Since we had our water filter anyway, we brought it. I ended up filtering water for all the 'clients' since there was none provided at all by the guide & staff! We were apparently expected to buy bottled water from the locals. This would have been pretty expensive and still probably not enough water to keep us healthy at elevation (we slept above 3800 meters twice and hiked above 4400). And promoting that kind of garbage generation is terrible for a company whose tagline is 'responsible tourism!'

mobyfiles reviews

Rather than clog our primary blog site with nitpicking about places we've been and things we've done, we're starting a secondary site where we can rant and rave, without interrupting the flow of the main mobyfiles site. This will probably be more of interest to other people who may want to do some of the things we've done than people just following along on our year of play and travel.

We make no promises that our reviews will be unbiased, or timely, or coherent. If you have a question about anything you see reviewed (or think we did/saw but didn't review) either email us or leave a comment, and we might respond or update the review with more info.