Q. Brent J. and his wife from Washington are going to South America with their 5 and 7-year-olds, spending 10 days in the Galapagos with his sister, and looking for ideas for the rest of their stay.
Thanks for your request for itinerary assistance on your upcoming month in South America with your wife and two girls, ages 5 and 7. Since you will be based in Quito, Ecuador, and have already planned to spend a 10-day vacation there touring the Galapagos, we want to suggest some other Spanish-speaking countries (as your wife requested) that you might want to consider.
Peru with Kids
Our first choices would be Peru and Colombia. Peru is a fascinating country, with most visitors going to the so-called Sacred Valley of the Incas area near Cuzco and Macchu Picchu. We’ve talked to some travel experts who suggest that young kids can make the trip to Macchu Picchu, which is a accessible even to the elderly, but they advise that the very high altitude in Cuzco, at 3300m/10,800 feet, may be a problem for your children. This city is also known for its intense UV rays, so be sure to have strong sunblock on hand. Having said that, ask your pediatrician for their advice, and if you decide to go, keep in mind that many skiing families administer 1 aspirin per day for a week prior to ski vacations so that their kids adjust better to the altitude. There are other folk remedies you will hear, and many locally used ones, as Cuzco is a major tourist center in the country.
To get there from Cuzco, PeruRail provides passenger services on the 3 ft (0.91 m) gauge Ferrocarril Santa Ana to Aguas Calientes, delivering tourists for Machu Picchu in about 4 hours. These old narrow gauge trains are considered historic in the U.S. so the trip itself should be fun. It costs a bit more, but the Vistadome trains have all glass windows so you can see more of the journey. On some departures, there are also music and dance cultural shows put on during the journey, which should keep the kids busy.
If you’re concerned about alttiude, another option families prefer is to stay along the Urubamba River Valley (the Sacred Valley of the Inca) which is below the archeological site. There are lots of outdoor activities here and you can still catch the train up to Macchu Picchu, but from a different line.
There is also train service to Lake Titicaca over the La Raya pass (4,313 m or 14,150 feet), known as a special place to stop for the view over the Andean plateau. It’s the highest navigable lake in the world, and on the Bolivian side is the Isla Del Sol where you’ll find Inca ruins. On the lake’s Peruvian shore are the Las Islas Flotantes or floating islands, handmade from totora reeds and home to the Uros tribe. This is supposed to be a fascinating place to visit.
The official Peru Tourism site has a very good description for the route: “Arequipa – Colca – Puno – Cusco” which they estimate can be done in about 11 days. We suggest you add a few more days for downtime for the kids, but you can take a look at their suggestions and see what appeals to you.
By the way, you can fly directly to Cuzco, so research airfares once you’re settled in Quito. It is said that the overnight buses in both Ecuador and Peru have had safety issues, therefore only take them during the day.
One company that organizes group tours and also a private car/driver is Latour Latin America Tours. A typical itinerary for Peru, if you planned ahead, might be 1-2 nights in Lima where you can tour the colonial city; 2 nights in the Sacred Valley area and 2 nights in Cuzco. Once you’re there, there are vendors who can organize horseback riding or mountain biking if your older child was interested.
Colombia with Kids
Our other thought is Colombia, which I enjoyed with my family last summer. We spent 4 days in Bogota (here, too, you will need to get acclimated to the altitude) and there are fun sights in the city. The Gold Museum will occupy a day and you cannot miss the hilltop Monserrate Cathedral with its fantastic views. We stayed in Candelaria (see photo above), maybe not the safest neighborhood late at night, but it’s beautiful and architectually pure, and will be the most fun for you to walk around. Picture government palaces, good museums and many impressive buildings that the kids will enjoy seeing from the outside.
Our hostel was in Candelaria, too, in a great location. The Casa Platypus is the more “hotel” like part of this place, which also has backpacker dorms, and we had a very nice room with a nearby bathroom. Staff was great, very accommodating.
Through them, we learned of Villa de Leyva, a pretty rural town about 4-5 hours away by bus. It’s actually a very upscale weekend retreat for the Bogota elite, with many small hotels and private villas behind huge stone walls. We stayed at the Colombian Highlands Hostel, another mixed hotel/hostel with camping out back, some really cheap dorm rooms, and then simple private rooms that include breakfast in the very cheap rates. There are many good restaurants and galleries in Villa de Leyva (about a 1/2 mile walk but your kids should be really fit by then), as well as a fun market.
We spent a week in Villa de Leyva joining half-day trips, one for horseback riding, and a few hiking adventures. It’s a beautiful part of the country, safe and peaceful, and walking back and forth through local farms was a great way to meet the friendly Colombian people.
About 22 hours by bus from Bogota (flights are very expensive) and on Colombia’s Caribbean coast is the historic, beautiful city of Cartagena. Thsi UNESCO World Heritage Site is a fortified town with 17th century ramparts, cathedrals and cobblestone streets. There are many local guided tours of the historic mansions and monasteries, as well as a wonderful beach nearby. Note that it is a very popular and touristy area with accommodations in many price ranges. There are several national parks nearby to explore on daytrips, and some have rustic lodges within their boundaries — great if your kids are into wildlife.
We think this is a good start, let us know how your planning goes and if we can be of help. Then, please, do share your travel tales with the rest of the community.
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I poured my heart and soul into this!!! Hope you people enjoy! =)
Wow, this is wonderful! You are so lucky to have gotten this opportunity. You looked absolutely gorgeous at the show and the red carpet. Thanks for sharing this, it really made me smile. I used to have the biggest crush on Joe Jonas.. hahah!
Amazing trip!
I hope that my story will inspire and enrich your lives; even if it doesn’t touch you as much as it has touched me. I hope that this will be passed on and that people will take a few minutes just to read what I had to say and try to be in the mind of these children. Try to change your day and see your house, your possessions, your income, and those many great things that you possess and find a way to share them with others. We all need a wakeup call sometimes, a message to straighten us out and look at the life we were given. I hope to go back next year to repeat the experience all over again and try to change myself even more, I love those children and I love their compassion and selflessness. Words can’t fully express what I felt or what I witnessed but my words are clear, these people see the world much differently than us, they treat possessions differently and they know how to work as a community.
This is about when my family and I took a trip down to Central Florida for our Family Vacation.
Hope you enjoy!
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I will never forget the time I spent in Germany.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story!
Best luck.
South Africa is this amazing country that not only is beautiful for its animals and scenery but for its people and for its ability to overcome the greatest oppression: apartheid, the discrimination of the majority. I am so glad I was given the gift of traveling to South Africa. It is an experience I will never forget!
It was a great trip!
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My typed essay about my vacation in Vietnam. It seem poorly written or should I say typed :\
Bryan Gray Europe Tour.
My vacation to Panama became suprisingly meaningful, contrary to what I had initially expected.
Thank you
This was a fun and yet difficult project i truely have enjoyed sharing my vaction with you.
Mahalo,
Have you ever been to Maine? What did you like best?
This is such an amazing story and essay!!
Their were many more memories from this trip that impacted me as much as the ones that were included, but I just didnt have enough room. So, I shortened it and tried to write the best description of the trip without exceeding the word limit. But the trip was, indeed, as remarkable as I said it was.
Washington is a really nice place. It has many museums and historical places. it also has very delicious foods. Chinatown was my favorite place to eat.
Thank you for this scholarship opportunity!
IB York was a great experience, and a great opportunity to explore new ideas and innovations
So now I head to college without my classmates but i will always have this wonderful experience.
🙂
This is one of my many travel adventure stories from my trip to Europe in the beginning of the summer. Besides Prague, I traveled to Berlin, Munuch, and Nuremberg in Germany, Innsbruck in Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and France. My favorite place was Switzerland, but my favorite story was the one I shared. I hope you enoy reading it as much as i enjoyed experiencing it!
I want everyone to be able to expericence something like I did.:) Everyone desevers happines!
I hope you enjoyed my travel blog and I hope you plan to take your mom to the Peaks of Otter Lodge for the best brunch you will ever eat. For more information click on this link:
http://www.peaksofotter.com/
Finished product. I love PERU!
This eye-opening opportunity has shaped my conviction toward making change and developing the community. It is a great pleasure to meet all those Leadership Award Honorees and other49 ANNpower fellows from 24 states in the U.S. I will continue to make change and build a dynamic community, excursively to ethnic, social, political gender aspects of advantage, as my milestone to become a great leader!
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I hope everyone enjoys my trip to Catalina and Ensenada!
This trip was the best trip regarding family time. It is unforgettable.
To see more photography from the trip, check out my photojournal: http://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Photojournal-of-My-Grecian-Travels/213497035367351.
What a testimony!! Thanks for posting. You don't know how impactful this is. Let Jesus keep using you for His glory. 😉
I was saved in August of 2009. I was in my parents's room and we all prayed for m, becuase I was tired of not having a desire for God. There I gave my life to Him and let Him be my Lord. I already excepted Him as Savior, but though it was a license to sin. Thatt day, though I wanted to repent of my sin and let God lead me. Lord and Savior go hand-in-hand. My life is changed. Now I have convictions and am learning so much about seeking God, because He is seeking me. It's awesome to live in the security and hope of knowing I will see Him one day in heaven. I am so glad He lives in me, because my goodness outside of Him is nothing. I don't know what I would do without Him.
Jesus used that park to bring you and your dad back together. How beautiful 🙂
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To whoever reading this, I am the person wearing blue shirt and white shorts, sligtly leaning on the panda bear statue.
My essay that talks about my experience traveling to Lima, Peru aims toward encouraging others who are not too familiar with it to visit and appreciate the fun life changing experience they're gauranteed to get.
What a great contest! Hope to see lots of terrific teen travel stories here!
It was difficult for me to type a 600 word blog about an amazing experience I had in the month of July. It was also difficult for me to choose certain pictures from the ones that I have chosen, so I uploaded the pictures of my time at NeiHu elementary school. I really wished that I could have used more sightseeing photos, but unfortunately, those were too big to upload.
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This was an amazing experience! I am so grateful for everything it taught me!!
From research, I believe the ice cream shop was called Eisdiele Eddy. More information about the exchange program can be found at http://www.aatg.org/study-trip-faq as well as at the bottom of the page at http://www.aatg.org/NGE-awards.
These Picutures are both of my own creation (one being an acrylic painting). When I took this picture at the western wall in Israel, the man in the photo was crying his heart out wearing a tattered down bath robe, I thought it would make for an intersting picture. So it did, it also inspired to me to create a painting in which I showed the world what I believe he really is. A man who is down on his luck but seems to still find peace in his life.
My sophomore year of high school I went to Donner Pass in California with a group called The Woods Project (www.thewoodsproject.org) . I had to apply to go , I was really anxious and scared that I wasn’t going to get. When I got my acceptance letter I was excited. I was also nervous because I had never been away from home for more than a week and The Woods project was going to last for two weeks. I had chosen to go to Donner Pass because I wanted to experience something new. I was going to go backpacking for one week and hiking the other. I had never gone backpacking before. When I told my friends that I was going backpacking they started to laugh because I am the smallest girl in my whole school and they didn’t think I was going to make it. Getting that response from my friends made me super scared of going to the trip. I thought I was going to die while backpacking!
My dad went to go drop me off at the airport and then he left. I was already scared and freaking out at the fact that he had just left me there and I did not know anybody! . I got in the plane to California and I was already regretting going on the trip. I was going to be with complete strangers for two weeks! When we got to California we all got split .There were three groups going to different places, one to Yosemite, another to Marine Headlines and then mine, to Donner Pass. I got in a van and that’s where I met the people who I was going to spend two weeks with. We were in that van for hours! When we finally got to our cabin we had to go up a hill to get to the door.
The first cabin we stayed in was named Clair Tappan Lodge. It was really nice . It was made out of wood, had a pool table, personal chef, jacuzzi and hot water in the showers. I loved it there! Too bad it only lasted for two days then it was time to go backpacking. They gave us our backpacking materials. I tried on the backpack and almost fell over. My backpacking week had started. We went up and down mountains, through rivers and lakes, and I thought we were never going to set up our tents. When it started to get dark we finally started cooking. The food we had was not good at all. We couldn’t bring a lot of food because of the bears and other animals. My second day of backpacking went better than the first. Everybody in my group started to know each other better and soon we became really close. We would sing while backpacking to make time pass faster and at night we didn’t want to sleep because we would play games. While backpacking I got to experience many things I hadn’t before. Even though I was the smallest girl going backpacking I was always the leader of the line because of my stamina.
When our backpacking week ended it was time to hike. I had gotten the hardest part of the trip over with so I knew hiking was going to be a piece of cake. We would hike in the morning and hanged out at night. It was the best experience I had ever had! When it was time to go back home I didn’t want to because I knew I would miss my friends.
To watch my video go to : http://youtu.be/FLd7W71EnyU
My experience as a first time camper.
i hope i win