Our First Trip to Peru Was One of the Worst Trips Ever

This is not just a tale of overcoming adversity, but a story of travel fails so numerous you’ll wonder how we all came out of it.

I don’t mean how we all came out of it alive, as it’s not that intense, but how we maintained positive relationships with one another during and after what happened.

Somehow, we all came out of it with a love of travel still intact, too.

While we can laugh about it today, there was a lot of personal growth that had to happen to get here. Let’s get into it.

It started with a dream realized.

When my husband was still just my boyfriend, I told him I already had a love that will be a part of my life forever: travel.

An international vacation would then be a test for our relationship before moving forward in the levels of seriousness.

So far, we were compatible with how we liked to spend our time in our normal lives. Tht included playing with dogs, eating, watching high-quality televised dramas, and watching high-quality dramas play out on street corners.

But would we be compatible travelers? It would determine the course of the rest of our relationship.

Travel was an important part of my life, and I wanted a partner that both respected that and had a similar yearning to see the world.

Note: I’m also very type A, so it wasn’t just any type of travel I was after. I wanted to take the reins, and spend my vacations actually seeing and doing, not sleeping in and tooling around hotel bars or taking a cruise.

On top of my requirements that my partner had to be a good traveler, an added wrinkle was that we’d be taking this trip with another couple, too.

Yes, we were adding another couple into the mix.

Was that not how you took your first international trip with your boyfriend?

READ MORE: I’m really good at convincing people to travel with me. Learn about my ways!

It was all in the details.

And so it came to be that we began planning a trip to Peru.

Our main motivation for going to Peru was ticking something off that was on everyone’s bucket list: Machu Picchu.

As far as when we’d go, I was a teacher at the time, so we could only travel on school breaks during the spring, winter, and summer months.

Fun fact: That’s high season for everyone else.

We decided to go during spring break from those options, as it was over the birthdays of three out of four participants: me, my husband, and my friend Simonne. Jeff, her boyfriend at the time and now her husband, would be joining, sans birthday.

This was over a decade ago now, so my planning skills were still being honed. I knew traveling during a shoulder season, in this case at the end of a rainy season, was probably a good idea if we wanted to stick to a budget in this ever-popular tourist destination.

But was it a good idea in any other sense of the word?

READ MORE: I know when to visit Machu Picchu now for better outcomes, by the way.

We booked our flights. Simonne and Jeff, a flight attendant and pilot, respectively, who typically fly standby, bought actual plane tickets, so you know the excitement was high.

As far as our loose plans to access Machu Picchu, we knew we wouldn’t be hiking the Inca Trail. We were too short on time, and, even in our youth, not interested in the camping aspects of that idea.

We’d take the train up to Machu Picchu instead, still expecting some traipsing about once we made it up there. We made vague plans to figure out altitude medication once the date approached.

Simonne also had a friend living in Peru at the time who promised to show us around Lima, where we’d be stationed for the first few days of the trip.

We settled in for the anticipation of this grand adventure, counting down the days until we’d be in one of the most awe-inspiring sites in the world.

Mother Nature had other plans.

Then the mudslides happened.

From the comfort of our homes, we watched as tourist after tourist was evacuated from the ruins.

As we were all adventurous spirits, we looked at the news with some positivity intact. This was something that happened there, right? Sometimes you go somewhere and need to be evacuated, but it’s a good story, and a good time was still had by all.

Then we learned that the mudslides weren’t only a massive inconvenience.

They washed away people’s homes in the surrounding areas and destroyed part of the railroad we’d be taking to get to Machu Picchu. People died. This was no joke.

As our trip was booked on non-refundable tickets, we had to plan a new course of action. We didn’t want to just hang out in Lima for a week, so we planned to go to Lake Titicaca, one of South America’s largest lakes, on a side trip instead.

It was no Machu Picchu, but we could still have a great adventure there, and the name made us all giggle.

We were so young back then.

Regional tickets booked on Star Perú, we set out for our first trip to South America.

Star Perú had other plans.

We arrived at the airport the morning of our flight to Lake Titicaca, and that’s when we found out that our flight had been canceled.

When I booked the flights, I forgot that they weren’t able to accept Gmail addresses as a point of contact, so I offered them my work email, instead. That’s something I wasn’t regularly checking on vacation at the time, or really ever.

The notice of the cancellation went there.

I was so upset. This wasn’t just an example of epic airport fails. This was also on me.

There weren’t any other flights departing Lima that day for Lake Titicaca. The next one out was well into the next day, which would have meant an even quicker turnaround back to Lima.

I cried real tears at the desk of the Star Perú check-in agent, which, in the eyes of my group, was strategic. We were issued a full refund for the missed flight.

We were still stuck in Lima for the foreseeable future, in this case, the rest of our bucket list trip.

Was there a way to salvage this?

I was traveling with some of the most positive humans in the universe.

We had already seen what we thought we needed to see in Lima, as we were expecting to leave that day. That included the Erotic Gallery.

Fun fact: I saw more pottery of phalluses than I’d need to in a lifetime.

We went to Love Park and took smoochy pics with a view of the very sensuous “El Beso” sculpture.

We ate meals that cost us $3 and toured the city center.

We were ready to leave Lima.

Then we couldn’t.

But my friends and my then-boyfriend got to work coming up with nearby alternatives.

We’d visit to the Magic Water Circuit, water fountains that light up in colors for a nightly show.

We’d spend a day at Playa El Silencio, a passable beach where we could be one with our thoughts. We’d explore the ruins of Huaca Pucllana, a pyramid in central Lima.

I didn’t go on that last jaunt, though. I had some kind of illness by that point that involved what I dubbed the “jungle fevers,” and a peculiarly intense aversion to papaya juice. It still smells like vomit to me to this day.

Our immune systems had other plans.

This shit show of this trip also includes illness for 100 percent of our group.

I had some kind of 24-hour flu: fevers, chills, aches, general malaise, and the aforementioned papaya aversion.

The rest of the group had their own bouts of intestinal problems. All three of them, including Brian, my future husband, got the runs.

We think it was after drinking shots of water served table-side at some coffee shop in Lima. Maybe it was the room temperature juice at the ceviche stand. It’s unclear.

What was clear was the intense gas everyone was breathing in for a good portion of the trip and the displacement of blame related to that gas.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, but it was close.

Lima was fine, but the real fun happened after Simonne and Jeff returned to our accommodations after a night of drinking into the early hours of the morning.

I was in the throes of my illness at the time, and resting in the hotel room with Brian, who somewhat begrudgingly stayed behind with me.

Falling asleep to some kind of bad movie I’m sure we were watching on the basic cable in the room — I vaguely recall Coyote Ugly — I heard a knock on the door.

It was my dear friend, Simonne, asking Brian for his pants, a story that will live on forever in my memory as one of the best drunk stories I’ve witnessed.

She wanted me to note here that she was drunk enough to ask for those pants, but sober enough to realize that she wouldn’t fit in mine, as she is “a sturdy gal.”

Note: Those are her words, not mine. She has a lovely figure.

When asked about it today, she says she needed a pair of pajama pants. It really wasn’t clear what she was after at the time. She just kept repeating over and over that she needed Brian’s pants, immediately, and without further questions from me.

We learned some lessons.

All of this is a good story today, and something we can look back on when we think about how far we’ve come since this series of amazing fails. I do way more research now when I’m planning travel, especially international travel, before booking anything.

We also make sure to book as much as we can that’s refundable, or at least on credit cards that offer refunds on travel purchases if something goes wonky.

I’d be lying to you if I said I attach travel insurance to every trip we take. I’m not telling you not to. I’m not telling you that you should, either, as insurance won’t cover things like global pandemics most of the time.

The point is, read the fine print on what that policy would cover.

There were other lessons. I’m pretty confident we’ll never fly Star Perú again, no matter how many years pass.

And if you’re going to a place where you really shouldn’t drink the water, that also means consuming the ice and anything that may have interacted with that funky water.

As far as our travel buddies, we never redid that trip together, but Brian and I made it happen just over a decade later. Once our trip to Peru happened (it was postponed once due to the pandemic), it was awesome and without incident.

Love this kind of stuff? Check out more content like this below:

• Travel Bloggers Can Be Pretty Annoying!
• My Real Thoughts on Hitting the Trails
• Types of Hikers You’re Likely to Encounter
• How to Combat Terrible Travel FOMO
• Should You Keep Calling Places Overrated?

Some travel tips to help you plan better than I did:

• How to Take Better Photos Out in the Wild
• Tips for Introverts Traveling the World
• Airbnb Tips to Avoid a Terrible Stay
• How to Act Right on a Guided Food Tour
• Rules You Should Know for National Parks

Want to see more?