College Student with 10 Days in Peru
 

I will be spending 10 days in Peru at the beginning of December and I was hoping to get some suggestions for itineraries or points not to miss. Other than a few points, the trip is fairly open and unplanned at the moment. I will be traveling in a small group, also in a group of at least 2 people (including myself) but members of the group will all have their own schedules, overlapping at times.

So far, the only set in stone facts of the trip are as follows:
Flight from Buenos Aires EZE - Lima Friday Dec. 3rd (getting into Lima late that night)
Fly to Cuzco sometime this weekend (have not booked flight yet)
Machu Picchu on Monday
Leave Lima - EZE Sunday Dec 12th at night

We are incredibly flexible, and will be staying primarily in hostels to save money. The main goal is to see as much as possible of the area in the amount of time we have. We are college students on a budget, but are more than willing to spend the money if it is worth it. Really, any suggestions as crazy as they sound are welcomed! This is my last blow out trip of my semester, so it has to be amazing!

Hey August congrats on your trip

www.lokihostels.com nice in your areas

take an altitude illness preventive like

Acetazolamide or Dexamethasone 2 days B4 and 2 days after

your flight LIM CUZ or odds are you will get sick from

the altitude www.mdtravelhealth.com

Personally in 10 days I would follow the Gringo Trail

seeing ALL the sites along the way capping it off with MP

visit then fly Back to Lima works best to see more

and adjust to alitude better.

adventures.worldnomads.com/destination/168/itinerary/23.aspx

Thank you qwovadis for the links, they are really helpful! The only thing is that we are fairly set on doing Machu Picchu at the beginning since we are meeting a larger group there.

I do like the looks of the Gringo Trail, perhaps revised a little bit for our purposes. But my question is, how plausible would it be to do the Gringo Trail in reverse, starting at Machu Picchu? I understand that one of the reasons for the path is to adjust to elevation, but I have been living/studying and traveling in Argentina for the last 4 months. One of my trips was to the Salta region of Agrentina, and I had zero problems with the elevation there.

I'm not set on doing the Nazca lines, although they do seem interesting, I don't know if that would be the best use of our time. Does anybody have any advice on possible day trips from Lima? Perhaps to Paracas?

Not really a day trip but I'd recommend Trujillo and some of the Moche pyramids. You could do it with a night bus there and back and a full day at the sights (Chan Chan, Huaca de Luna are the main ones). If you can afford to fly you might try do do both Chiclayo (museum Lords of Sipan) and Trujillo.