[00:00:14] Speaker A: Welcome to two Travel Dads podcast. Here we share our favorite destinations, travel tips, stories from our adventures, and bring on awesome guests to share insights into their travelsome lives. Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and check out our detailed show
[email protected]. Podcast at thespecific hey, welcome back to another episode of two Travel Dads podcast. I'm Rob.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I'm Chris.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: And today we are going to be talking about. We wanted to chat about our trip from Peru that we just came back from, because it was awesome and it was our first time for any of us going to South America. Yeah, it was really cool. So, yeah, we went to Peru.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: It was amazing.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: What was the best part of going to Peru?
Of everything, I think the best part.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: It's. It's hard, but I would have to say the woolly monkeys in the Amazon jungle.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: The Amazon rainforest is absolutely my favorite part, too. So we should save that for last to talk.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, that's the last place that we were in, in Peru before we came home.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: That's true. Well, then how should we talk about this? Should we just kind of talk about.
Well, what inspired us to go to Peru? It's. Because it's actually. It's a funny story.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Well, I. I mean, we. We both travel, obviously, and so we accrue airline miles, which we've talked about, like, great ways to accrue airline miles, specifically with american airlines, and how to get loyalty points and all that stuff. Different episode, Bob can probably link back to that in the show notes, but we had all of these american airline miles, and so I was just, like, looking one day about, where can we go? Like, what's a reasonable mile point spend to be able to go someplace? And Lima, Peru, just happened to pop up on that list of, I think it was, like, 30,000 miles round trip per person to get from Jacksonville to Lima.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: It takes fewer miles to get to another continent than to get to Seattle.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it was incredible. It's wild, but decided, just go ahead and book it. I mean, we've always wanted to go to South America, and, you know, whether or not that be Colombia, Brazil, you know, Peru, but decided, just go ahead and book it. But then. So had that booked, and now it's like, what are we gonna do once we get there? What's available? What's the lodging and everything like?
[00:02:39] Speaker A: So your version of how this happened is very different from my version.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Is it really?
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Was it starting with the lodge?
[00:02:46] Speaker C: Yeah, but.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: But I also had looked at. So for me, the starting point was looking at miles first, and then I was like, what's in Peru? And then I found the treehouse lodge to bring to you. So from your starting point, it was the treehouse lodge?
[00:02:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: Because my version of this is that once upon a time, you sent me on Instagram just a picture of this tree house in the jungle that people could stay at, and me being like, oh, my gosh, that's so cool. And then we kind of talked about it, and you kind of said a little bit about, oh, we can use miles, blah, blah, blah. And then we went months without talking about it.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah, because I knew about the mile part ahead of time.
[00:03:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: And then I texted you and was like, are we doing this or aren't we doing this randomly? I think I was in Hawaii or something like that. I was someplace.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: You were?
[00:03:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: And. But isn't that.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Because.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: Well, anyways, I had booked the tickets, and I was going to have that be a surprise, but. Because, of course, you're on the reservation. It showed up in your account as well.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. That's what happened. I logged into American to get my boarding pass, and there was a mysterious. Another set of tickets that went to Lima, Peru. And then the surprise was spoiled, which is okay, because I'm not great with surprises, it's true.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: But, yeah.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: And then we booked. We booked all of our stuff, which is kind of maybe where we should go from here. So going to a new country is always kind of a weird thing because, you know, you've seen pictures and stuff before we started actually, like, booking things or before I presented an itinerary to you, what did you think we were gonna see in Peru?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: Machu picchu.
[00:04:20] Speaker C: Machu picchu.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Anything else?
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Amazon jungle. So, I mean, I know there's a sacred valley, and I looked at that, so I wasn't sure we're gonna do, like, what's that? Rainbow Mountain. But definitely Machu Picchu. Definitely Amazon jungle and the rainforest.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah. So it was kind of funny. I had to ask a friend for help, who. She goes everywhere with her son, and she also is a travel planner now. I had her help figuring out, just, like, where things are in relation to, like, our starting point and how to get everywhere. Because, you know, I don't know. When you go to a new country, everything's kind of weird. There's roads, there's railroads, there's planes you have to take. And growing up in the United States, you don't actually learn anything about other countries, geography, or the reality of them.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Well, I did, but I think you went to different schools.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: I went to different schools, yes. And we never touched on any of this stuff whatsoever. So for me, in trying to plan it, yeah, that was confusing. I totally had to get help. So let's see, where do we start? We flew to Lima and started in Lima.
And then because that's the main place.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: We have to fly into, which is insane.
[00:05:32] Speaker C: Yep, yep.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: And it's funny because also Lima is on the same time zone as we are here in Florida until daylight savings time, and then they're an hour behind. So even though it's flying so far, like, you're still like, vertically you're on the same line.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Which was great. Easy to adapt.
[00:05:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: It made it so that when we got home, we weren't all like 5 hours off or something like that.
So, yeah. So we flew to Lima and trying to figure out kind of how we should do all this, ideally, and we'll talk about this more in our episode about visiting the Andes. Ideally, if you are going to Machu Picchu, you kind of take your time working your way up into the Andes because it's such a high elevation.
We didn't get have that luxury. So we flew to Cusco, and then from Cusco we drove or we had a driver to get us to.
I can never say it right on Oyantan tombo. Yeah, there you go. Oyante tombo.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Oyanta.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: I can only say it right when I'm reading it.
[00:06:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: To Oyanta Tombo, which is the kind of the center of the sacred valley, which we'll talk more about that later, too. It's super cool. And that's where you kind of launch your Machu Picchu expedition. So we put that on the itinerary and then nothing improves. Really close to each other.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: That was.
It depends where you're at.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Well, like we had to.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: What it is you really want to see.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: So we'll say, like, we had to fly to Cusco.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: And then after that we were heading down to the coast to see the penguins and flamingos and stuff. And so we had to drive for that.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: And then we had to drive back up to the main airport in Lima so that we could fly to the Amazon. And then once we flew to the Amazon, then we had was an hour and a half bus ride and then a 45 minutes boat ride.
[00:07:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: It all depends on what you want to see. And then you'll figure out, like, is it close or not? But I mean, because we wanted to see Lima, we wanted to see the sacred valley and Machu Picchu, which is in the mountains. We want to see the rainforest and the jungle, which is not in the mountains. And then we wanted to see the penguins, which was all along the coast in the desert, totally different places. But, yeah, Peru's big and so it. We definitely did the planes, trains, automobile, boat, any type of transportation that was possible. We took it.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it was kind of funny trying to figure out, like, what's our mode of transportation for this next time?
[00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think all that to say, it's like kind of stepping back to, okay, what. What we were going to do in Peru. I think it's like we had to figure out what were the highlights in terms of what we wanted to see. And then that's when you started to fill in, like, the itinerary, which then took us to all those places across that. That country, which so many different landscapes. It's incredible.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. You were good at remembering the handy little fact about it.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: There's like 125 microclimates across the world and 85 of them.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah, 85, 85.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: I mean, we saw, yeah. Coastline, we saw desert, we saw, you know, the Andes mountains all the way up to 12,000ft. The Amazon rainforest. Like, it was just really interesting.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: And we went out to the islands.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Islands, yep. And so, and of course, all the wildlife. It's just really diverse geography and.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: I think the thing about all those different climates that surprised me was when we drove down to paracas and then, you know, didn't know what to do, so I booked a tour and we actually, it took us to basically the northernmost point of the Atacama desert, which is known, you know, Chile. Chile is known for having this incredible desert.
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: It continues all the way up into Peru. And literally, it is just endless expansion of sandy, dune covered mountains. Like, it isn't even, like, it's not like the desert in Mexico where you see cactus and random nothing. Palos Verdes, it was just like, I.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Guess, like kind of like a chunky sahara.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Like, it. There was. It looked like there was no life, not even birds.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:09:55] Speaker A: It surprised me. But it meets the beach, which I thought was also super cool because the desert literally just rolls down and then there you are at the Pacific Ocean, where it is gorgeous.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Kind of going out of order, out of, like, our itinerary. But paracas, I mean, so, like, getting there was insane because I had to drive. We actually rented a car. Did you have fun driving I did, because I do like to drive. I like to drive fast. I can be an aggressive driver. And so that gave me that opportunity to practice all of those skills really well, especially getting out of Lima, because there's just so many people. That city's huge and, you know, people don't want to hit their car, but they want to get to where they want to go. So you just shove yourself where you need to be.
[00:10:44] Speaker A: And it is bumper cars.
[00:10:46] Speaker B: Oh, well, you don't bump, but you are very. You're inches away. So it requires, you know, a steady eye and constant foot on the pedal.
But drove down to paracas, which was about a three and a half, four hour drive from Lima all the way. If there were down to paracas, if.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: There was no traffic in Lima, it would have been less than 3 hours.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: It would have shaved off about an hour and 20. Still a far drive. But, yeah, getting out of Lima was insane. And we had left at night, so we didn't get to Paracas until about eleven at night. And so we couldn't really see how the landscape was changing until, of course, we woke up in the morning. But getting down into Caracas was quite an adventure. And, you know, of course, waking up in the morning and then being able to see where we're at and see the beach out of what's Paracus Bay was gorgeous.
[00:11:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Speaker A: It was very different than anything else I was expecting. And I had done, like, once I started planning all this, I'd done tons of research and I had no idea. Like, this is why it's important to actually, like, read people's travel blogs is because even though through all my research, I really didn't know what to expect of everything south of Lima. Like, I knew that we were going to be able to see penguins and flamingos and stuff.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Well, that was the main reason you actually want to go to Praca. It's not so much the beach. You just want to see penguins and flamingos in their natural habitat.
[00:12:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Like we did. We've got the beach at home. That's great. So we don't need to travel to. To the beach necessarily, but, wow, so very different down there. And, yeah, the other one thing I.
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Just wanted to touch back on in pracas before we, like, leave pracas, is you thought there was another activity that was part of the tour that you booked, which, the tour was cool because it took us out on the boat. It took us to go see one of the Nazca lines. It took us to go see the penguins and the flamingos. And then the other part of the tour was going out to the desert, but in the desert, they actually do sand sledding.
[00:12:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: Which looks like so much fun because it's huge hills. And, of course, you get on what looks like a boogie board, and you just sled down the sand dune.
[00:12:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Like, I know you can do that at White Sands National park. You can do it at honeymoon sand dunes. But there, because their sand dunes are so tall and so steep, it literally is. It's like ski hills. It's crazy. Next time. Yeah, next time, for sure.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: So that was, like, our third stop within the trips.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Was practice.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So, I guess, yeah. Let's just kind of get back to, like, what the itinerary was, because it's so easy to just start talking about all kinds of things. Cause it was so weird. And we've got a podcast episode for each of the sections because each part of Peru that we visited was completely different.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: So, yeah, I mean, well, we started in Lima. Started in Lima because we're like, what's here to see in Lima?
[00:13:38] Speaker A: And so we saw some of what we thought was worthwhile seeing in Lima, which, when you listen to our Lima podcast, you can hear about that.
And then we flew to.
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Well, I was just gonna say real quick for people, because we're like, oh, just little tidbits, but, I mean, you booked a tour guide, which was super helpful to be able to go see those key sites while we were just there in downtown Lima, because we only spent, like, two days there, and we wanted to go and see, like, the catacombs. We went to the Larco museum, which had a lot of really great artifacts that was all about the Incan Empire and other local history and then lots of other really great sites that the tour guide took us to. But super great, knowledgeable tour guide, and highly recommend doing that while you're there, so you make the most of your time.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's funny because this is, like, we do a lot of travel where we work with, like, a tourism board or something, and so they'll set up a couple, like, maybe, like, guided kayaking or something like that. This is the first time that we've ever actually booked tours for ourselves and done intentional tours with a guide everywhere we went.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Well, and the kids loved it, because then they get asked questions, and so they're learning at the same time. And you're just getting the real. Like, you're getting the highlights of what you should be experiencing while you're there. And you may miss some things if you don't have that guide.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: So, as a parent, it makes it much more enjoyable, because then all of the curiosity and questions, which I love and appreciate, it gets directed to somebody else who has all the answers instead of just saying, I don't know, and then having to pull out your phone and look stuff up. Like, they loved. Talking to each of our guides in Lima, Joseph was awesome and knew everything about how the city was built and the history. And then when we were in the sacred valley, we had Oscar, and Oscar knew everything about agriculture and the Incas and the river and the Andes, like, super knowledgeable guides. And then we had a week with Edgar in the Amazon, and Edgar knew everything about the ecology and the wildlife.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: And how to survive because he helped the whole entire show. Naked and afraid for.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: We had a naked and afraid consultant as our guide for a week in the Amazon. Like, it was having somebody else who is the actual, legit, every single day expert in each of these places. It completely changed the experience. Oh, and we had a. We hired a guide for Machu Picchu, too. So you can, you know, you can go and show up on your own with. As long as you have your reservation and tour it on your own. But we actually hired a guide who knew so much. Percy.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Yep. Percy. And again, it's just when, for us, this was, like, one of those milestone trips. Call it once in a lifetime. Sure, maybe we'll be back to Peru, but this way, we really took away everything that was super special about. About Peru. And I don't feel like we missed out.
[00:16:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: Cause, you know, you want to do your research in advance, but also, like, you can't necessarily, in preparing for a trip, get to, like, college level understanding of history and culture and all these things. So having a tour guide that actually knows all that and is excited to talk about it, sometimes a little too excited to talk about it, it makes it completely different.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: I loved it. Yeah.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: But Lima was great and really great time with a tour guide.
And then we had to move on to the next part of our adventure, which was really going back to the airport in Lima and then flying to Cusco, which was.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Cusco is fascinating.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: High in elevation.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Yeah, it's high in elevation that we'll talk all about.
[00:17:24] Speaker B: Capital of the incan empire.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it was the capital of the Incan Empire. So when you land, you're like, oh, this is fascinating. Look at the way it's built. Oh, look at that church. It looks fascinating, too. Everything is built on top of old incan structures, which is different architecture.
[00:17:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:39] Speaker A: And the streets are zigzag windy.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Oh, it's. Yeah. Because the moment we got to the airport, it was. We had to find our driver, and the driver was taking us from Cusco through the town. It was, what, about a two hour drive to get to Oonto?
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:54] Speaker B: And it was just wild, zigzagging up through the streets, the hills, super hilly, because now we're in the elevation right in the mountains, and then getting all the way to Oyanton. Tombow.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Speaker B: Like, Cusco.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: Cusco is kind of built on, like, either. I don't know if you want to call them cliffs or just the steepest hills. It's like San Francisco in the andes, only more so.
[00:18:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: And extremely populated. I mean, it's a huge city.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Oh, it is so densely populated, and there is a lot of trash and things like that. That was. That was, I think, one of the most unusual things because, like, we've been to Mexico and I've been all over Mexico, and there's definitely a difference in the. I don't know, call it the maybe living standards, public cleanliness standards.
Cusco and Lima were something different.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's about the same, though. I mean, if you remember driving through Tijuana, I mean, it's very similar in terms of what the experience is like.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: I felt like it was a lot more.
Less put together and maintained than either of those places. But I don't know, that was just.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: Regardless, it's just something that you see and experience while you're going through other different countries that are, you know, similar to where you live.
[00:19:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: It was interesting, though, because when we got to oe.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Oyantan Tambo, I can never say it.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: When we got to Oyantantambo.
So when the Incas built up and developed the town more, they created, like, waterways through the center of town. And while we were there, we actually saw people, like, washing their clothes in the streets, like, in the.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: In the flowing, rushing in the flowing.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Stream that goes directly through town through their gutter system.
So, I mean, that was something super cool, but also very, very different, very.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Innovative for the time. Yeah, for sure.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: It was kind of like a little snapshot of, this is what it was like 500 years ago, and it's still like that.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And. But, yeah. So I remember getting into orientation and the driver pointing out, and these are. These are things if you've looked on instagram checking out Peru. But those cliffside pod hotels, we saw those right before we took a left to go off to orientatemba. But you'll see these pods that you can stand, which are attached to the cliffside. We actually met some people when we were staying at the Treehouse Lodge who spent a few nights there and told us a little bit about them. You know, there's two different tiers, but super cool if you're interested in that type of experience, waking up in the morning and just looking out and you're attached to a cliffside and what you'll see.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: And there's a couple different cliffside hotels, and then there's also one that sits on top of a cliff. So there's like, the sky Lodge, the star lodge. Vertical is another one. And when you drive by them, you just. You feel fear.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Some do, some are excited. I think it would be super cool. But when Chris goes back to Peru.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: On his own, he can do it.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: So we spent that time in Oyanton Tombo, at a really nice hotel that you booked at.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that was great. And there was alpacas on property.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Alpacas on property. You know, and always a good free breakfast, which is nice.
But that gave us opportunity to really tour the sacred valley, which was going to a few other different sites outside of Oyotan tombo. So we went to. We started with Oyotombo, checked out that amazing historical site all with Oscar, and then we went to. Was it Moray?
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Yeah, we went to Moret, and then we went to salt mines at Maras, which we'll talk about all that when we talk in depth about the andes, because there's so much to talk about.
But we did all that before we went to Machu Picchu, which maybe in retrospect, we should have done it in reverse, but Machu Picchu was cool because we got to do the train. And again, not going to give away the farm on this, because there's a lot to talk about with it, but adding train travel to what was already a really cool and unique trip was pretty special. I thought that was. I don't know, I actually thought that was one of my favorite parts of being in the andes, was just being on the train.
[00:22:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I thought the train ride was pretty cool, but we'll talk more about that.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: And then from there, you know, we went to agues calientes, which is Machu Picchu town. And then eventually we took the train back and returned to Oyante Tambo.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: And then, quick tip, always check your dates on all of your tickets and have multiple people check them to make sure you get it right.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: So the reason he says that is because when I booked our train tickets, somehow, and I looked at it like 50 times, I booked our tickets to and from aguas calientes for the same day instead of having an overnight. And so we went to board the train in alas Calientes, and they wouldn't let us on, and we had to buy a fresh set of Vista dome class tickets on the train. So more about that later. Good times. It was very sad, but, yeah. So we did the train took us back up to Ayanta Tombo, and then we actually updated our plans because we got really sick in the andes. The elevation was just too much and kids were throwing up. I was throwing up. It was really unpleasant. There was lots of public vomit and train stations.
So we headed to the coast early and we got to paracas, which was super fun.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. So again, that's like, we had to get back on a taxi back from where? Anton Tambo, 2 hours back to Cusco, wait in Cusco, and then fly from cusco to lima, get to Lima, get our rental car, and then that takes us back to the earlier part of the conversation where I drove us from lima to paracas.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: And paracas is down in the state of ica. And ica there's all kinds of other cool stuff, too. That's also where the town of pisco is, which Peru is known for. Pisco sours, because they've got their own regional booze.
[00:23:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: And then after we drove to paracas and drove back to Lima, we had one more flight where we made it.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: To Iquitos and super tiny, small, little tiny airport.
[00:24:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. It was great. It's actually really funny. So when you are traveling internationally, the airport lounges, all of a sudden, like, it's a standard that they all have. Like, the little tiny airport in Iquitos had a priority pass lounge. Priority pass lounge in Cusco, they had.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Another really nice priority pass lounge.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: With a bar that you tend yourself. And, gosh, the international departures lounge in Lima was huge and gorgeous. So definitely. And I'll put a link to priority pass in the show notes, because if you don't have that and you're traveling internationally, it is absolutely worth it to make your travel days so much easier.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Especially when you buy day passes and things like that. And, yeah, you know, and there's. There's different options to get priority pass, but for us, because we travel so much, it's definitely worth it to have that type of membership because otherwise you're spending all this other extra money in airports trying to feed your family.
[00:25:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:06] Speaker A: And, yeah, for us, we get to bring kids in, which makes it even better. So. Yeah, quite lovely.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah. But then. So we, you know, flew back, so. I'm sorry. Flew from Lima back to. Not back to you up to. Flew from Lima to Iquitos. So many things.
[00:25:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: And then met our guide, Edgar, there.
[00:25:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: And. And then took a bus. They loaded up all of our gear.
Not really a bus, but this awesome, like, Toyota, like a sprinter sport van, sprinter thing. And drove to this town of Naota and which is, I don't know, they say about 50,000 people, and then that's.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Where it was strangely big, even though it didn't look big.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And super beautiful. I mean, now we're in the, you know, in the low jungle.
[00:25:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: So.
[00:25:50] Speaker A: And this town is built all along the banks of the Amazon.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And then they loaded up all of our luggage and gear onto this cool boat. Different style of boat than I've seen in other places. It's kind of more long.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: I don't even know how to describe.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: It, with, you know, seats on each side. Just a different, different style. But anyways, then it was a 45 minutes boat ride to the tree house lodge and only 45 minutes because it was wet season. So there's a lot more opportunity to go through channels that normally during the dry season are dry.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Like little temporary tributaries that connect the big part of the Amazon to the little side rivers.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So then, boom, we get to our treehouse lodge, which was, I say, the main event of our trip.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. It was the best part. Hands down, we are going to be going back, taking other people, doing a group trip, because it is the most incredible experience, from sleeping in the jungle to. There was one day where Chris was peeing and he looked through the mosquito netting and there was a giant toucan outside the window. Like, it's just absolutely magical. It was so cool.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: And with delicious food.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: Really wonderful food with staff that is, like, top notch. Yeah, it's top notch. It's all inclusive except for your alcohol and, gosh, I mean, that includes the.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Guides, like, anywhere you want to go. And, like, we were super flexible.
[00:27:17] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:27:17] Speaker B: We picked out our, pick out all of your activities ahead of time, but you know what? Things change. You gotta flex.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:27:23] Speaker B: And they roll with it. They make the most out of your trip the time that you're there.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: And it was for the kids, also the most incredible experience. Again, having a guide who knows everything, and kids with access to just, like, a smart, fascinating person for the week.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: It just.
It's the most. It was kind of life changing.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: I mean, I want every travel experience to be just like that, which is.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Saw tons of wildlife, fish for piranhas, mate, blow dark guns, went on hikes.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: And then headed back to Lima to fly home.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: There you have it.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: So we've got three more episodes to share where we really dig into more about Peru and some of the cool cultural things that we saw and did and ate. We've got talk all about the Andes and altitude sickness and the amazing, cool, beautiful sights.
We've got one all about the Amazon jungle and river and staying in the jungle.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: And then do you want to do one about Praca studio? Basically an in depth one of each of the places that we went?
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Maybe.
[00:28:35] Speaker C: We'll see.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: We'll see how that conversation goes. But definitely at least three more Peru episodes coming your way. And then we'll also have another one with our friend Amanda, who we were chasing her around Peru. She had a very similar itinerary, visiting lots of different spots that we went to and some extras. So stay tuned for that as well, where she shares her experience, which is very different from ours. So, anything else on this one? Nothing. We're good.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: No, no. I guess we'll save it for some of the other episodes.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Awesome. And today, I'm gonna go and see if I can find us some pisco when I go shopping so that we have that on hand here at the house to tell stories about Peru to our friends.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: Oh, we're gonna have to make some pisco sours and do the egg white chick.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: I don't know about that. Maybe it's too complicated. I don't know. Stay tuned and we'll tell you whether or not we made them at home. Good times. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening. Make sure to hit that. Subscribe. Give us a rating if you want to. And check out our other episodes, too, because we've got everything from New York to Montana, tons about Hawaii. You name it, it's all there on twotraveldaz.com. And wherever you get your podcast episodes. That's it for now. Have a good day. Hastiluego two Travel Dads podcast is created by Rob and Chris Taylor in St. Augustine, Florida. We'd love to answer your questions here on the podcast, providing both our experience and stories. To share our own insights into whatever you're wondering about, visit twotraveldads.com podcast episodes to leave your questions and to check out past episodes and show notes. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and have an awesome day.
