the tour operator getting to and from Cusco food and lodging in cusco hiring
the porters and tipping the porters and the guides if you are ready grab your
notebook your calculator and let's dive right into it so first of all let's talk
about the price of the tour operator this is going to be one of the biggest
expenses if you want to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and this price is
going to be impacted by what type of tour operator or travel agency you're
going with in our case we paid 695 dollars per person with the travel
agency that we went with now this price is going to be impacted by what type of
tour operator you are going with and the sound rule basically is if the company
is local to Peru then it's going to be cheaper compared to a company that's
based in the USA or Europe now this $695 the company asked us to deposit 300
dollars and then the rest will be paid in cash once we arrive to cusco the
deposit you're going to make is not going to be refundable and it's not
going to be transferable to another person and the reason is the company is
going to use that money in order to get a permit to hike the Inca Trail to Machu
Picchu and if you do want to learn more about getting a permit you can check
this video here all right the second expense here is getting to and from
Cusco and this is going to be based on where you are traveling from so for
example if you are traveling from the United States this price can range from
$800 up to $1400 the cost of your flight is going to be basically one of the
biggest expenses in your trip and if you want to learn about how to find cheap
flies internationally you would want to check the
in the description box the third expense is lodging in Eaton in Cusco now we're
not talking about eating during the four days of the Inca Trail because those are
going to be covered by the tour operator or the travel agency you however need to
account for probably two days prior to your track and maybe two days after your
trek now the two days before your Trek are mandatory just to kind of adjust to
the high altitude and avoid high altitude sickness but then after the
trek it's up to you now for the lodging and food and Cusco we accounted for two
days before the trek and two days after and between lodging and food you're
gonna be looking for probably less than $500 generally speaking Airbnb is and
guest houses are cheaper than hotels and we personally went with the guesthouse
route and I'm going to link some information about the place where we
stayed the fourth expense in the list here is
hiring the porters and this is going to be a little bit tricky because prices
are different from one company to another but I'm going to walk you
through the options that the company we went with offered us so basically you do
have an option to either hire a house porter or a full porter a house porter
is going to carry eight kilograms of your personal items that's about 18
pounds for $95 the foot Porter however is going to carry 16 kilograms about 36
pounds for $190 and it can be shared by two people now the last expense here is
tipping the porters and I don't remember exactly how much money we paid for
tipping because we pretty much just gave whatever we had left in the local
currency as well as in dollars but I'm going to give you a breakdown so
basically there are three buckets the first one is going to be the cook the
assistant cook and the porters the second bucket is going to be the
assistant guide and then the third bucket is going to be for the guide and
as you can see here the SAS travel recommends that each person in the group
contributes between 50 and 60 solids that's about $19 to $23 to the first
bucket that's distributed between the cook the assistant cook to general
assistance and the porters now fifteen to twenty souls that's five
point eight dollars to seven point seven dollars from each person in the group
for the assistant guide and about eighteen to twenty eight so let's that's
seven dollars to ten point eight dollars for the principle guide so to make it
easy and sum it up this is going to be about twenty three dollars for the cook
assistant cook and the Porter's seven dollars for the assistant guide and ten
dollars for the principal guide which is a total of about forty to fifty dollars
to sum it all up we talked about the tour operator price that's six hundred
ninety five dollars we talked about the price of getting to and from Cuzco of
about one thousand dollars the price of food and lodging before the trek and
after the trek about five hundred dollars tipping the porters fifty
dollars in hiring the porters ninety five dollars so we are looking for a
total of two thousand three hundred forty dollars again this is based on our
own very experience they are going to be a lot of variation there but this is a
rough estimate just to kind of understand what you are getting yourself
into if you have any questions let us know in a comment and we will be very
happy to help you with your next adventure if you enjoyed this content
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a new video out without your trekking pals Habiba and Alex and we'll see you