My husband and I recently returned from Peru, and since then several people have asked me how I went about it, which travel agent I used and how I arranged for everything. Since I get asked this question every time we return from a big trip, usually once a year, I decided to write about the process I go through each time. Feel free to write to me if you’d like more details on any of the places mentioned and travel arrangements.
Deciding where to go
I have a list of places that I want to see so I just go down it every year to check off places that might be possible to visit. When we were planning our last trip, we had two options - South America or South Africa. South Africa was proving to be pretty pricey. On the other hand, I found that I could get reward travel to South America. So that made the decision fairly easy.
Researching
One of the best sites to research destinations is www.frommers.com. Their forums (called “Travel Talk”) really interest me. You can ask questions, suggestions and pretty much discuss anything with past and future travelers to a particular country. You really get insider tips from those who have already experienced it. For instance, I came to know through somebody’s post that Malaria pills are really not that necessary while traveling to the Amazon jungle. In turn, when I got back I posted that yellow fever vaccinations were also not required (having seen so myself).
I also found my tour company from frommers.com. In the “planning a trip” section they had given the pros and cons of going with an escorted tour company, with recommendations of some U.S. based ones. I knew instantly that these would be reliable, and decided to go with a name they suggested - Analie Tours (www.analietours.com). In retrospect we feel we could have toured on our own, but having it all arranged for us did save us tremendous time and hassle, especially considering that we don’t speak Spanish.
I also use my local library extensively for travel books and videos. Usually they have older editions, but it saves me the money from buying books every time.
Tour Guide or Solo
As I mentioned above, we believe that we could have done Peru on our own. But that’s because we travel extensively, and have learned, by and large, how to navigate through unknown places. I would recommend anyone not used to traveling to go with a tour company like Analie Tours. What they offer is incredible. You get to have a customized tour planned just for you. You can tell them exactly what dates you want to arrive and return, which places you want to see and how many days in each location, what class of hotels you want to stay in, and whether or not you want to include airfare in their package. That means not having to go on pre-scheduled departure dates or traveling with an army of a group. We toured the city of Cuzco with a guide all to ourselves. In the other places we shared our guide with just a few more people whose travel dates happened to coincide with ours.
We had drivers waiting for us inside airport terminals with our name signs ready to whisk us off to our hotels in nice cars, so we were spared the trouble of haggling with non-English speaking cab drivers. Finally, all the hotel suggestions of the travel agents lived up to expectations. Travel agents to several countries now offer this customized tour option so check on Frommers.com for suggestions.
We are planning a trip to South Africa in the near future, and based on what we’ve heard about how well developed the country is and how easy it is to get around, we will probably go solo and make all arrangements ourselves.
Guide Books
If you plan to go solo, make sure you have some great guide books. I don’t mean the ones that are only hotel and restaurant directories. Look for ones with insider tips to each place. Rick Steve’s Europe books are jewels. Not only are they personal accounts of his travels, they also give superb suggestions for reasonable itineraries, and money saving trips. For instance, when in Paris, it is much cheaper to buy a “carte” (10) of subway tickets than one at a time. In Florence, instead of standing in lines to get into museums, you can buy a museum pass beforehand and save yourself time and frustration. I picked up all these tips from Rick Steve’s Best of Europe book. No other company’s books come close to being as good as Steve’s, but if you shop around you’ll find something you like.
Finding Deals
God bless Google! If nothing else works, you can just type “deals to (wherever)” in the search box, and something WILL pop up. This is usually my last resort after I have exhausted all the possible avenues:
• First I check on airline sites for package deal. I usually go to Continental’s site since we are members, and also we live near its Newark airport hub. I have seen British Airways offer deals like Airfare + 4 nights in London for $300 per person!
• Then I go to the travel websites - Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz. They have pretty good deals too sometimes, especially cruises.
• I also check out AAA’s website since they offer travel package discounts to members. For instance I bought our Alaskan cruise tickets from them at literally half the price that the other websites were offering.
• I go to Frommers.com Travel Talk and note down suggestions by past travelers regarding deals that they got. This is usually a pretty reliable source. Most people will suggest travel agencies’ names, so you can check out their websites and look for good deals.
• Finally, I see how much free stuff I can get with airline miles and hotel points. This has been working out really well for us, and is one of the reasons we can afford to go to all the places we have been to.
After I have got a quote, or an estimate for how much the whole trip is going to cost, I ask around on various travel forums to see if it’s a good number.
Vineeta Chopra is an image and lifestyle expert. She runs http://www.vineetachopra.com, a site that covers everything Indian from fashion trends, home decoration to Bollywood.
