What's up Tangerineys? I'm Jordan and she's Maddie and we are Tangerine Travels.
We are from Arizona, living in Mexico and our travels have taken us to Lima, Peru.
So we are telling you today some of the things that we learned during our trip here:
what not to do and mistakes that you could make when travelling in the city.
The first thing you shouldn't do when coming to Lima
is forget that the voltage is different.
Your U.S outlets are probably going to fit, your European ones are probably going to fit
because they're kind of like a two and one here
usually
but it is a different voltage,
so if you want to make sure you don't fry your electronics
go and pick up a voltage converter before you come.
The next mistake you are going to want to avoid is assuming that
Pisco; a local drink is the same alcohol content as wine because they are both made out of grapes,
but Pisco is a distilled liquor and it is 40% alcohol,
so you can find yourself in big trouble if you're sipping on it thinking it's like
glasses of wine at 12 to 13% alcohol by volume.
Something they sell a lot of here in Lima Peru is coca candies.
It's made from the cocaine leaves and people often brew it into a tea. They used it for motion sickness. 5 Soles. 5 soles?
(Spanish) Two for 8 (Soles)
This is natural Coca (Leaves)
For drinking tea or chewing.
You can get yourself in kind of a lot of trouble by bringing it back to your home country,
so the next thing not to do is buy that and maybe forget that it's in your bag or something because it's still
considered in that same category as the drug itself, even though it's not actual cocaine. (giggles)
This one might be obvious to many but if you haven't done a lot of international travel,
don't forget that there's a different currency here,
it's called "sol" or "soles" (for plural), but pretty much everywhere accepts credit cards,
so I think your best option here is to get a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees and
use that everywhere to pay. We personally use an American Express travel credit card, which we've had no problem using here in Lima.
It's been accepted pretty much everywhere, except for one place, (Amex is not commonly accepted in Mexico though)
I think, so if you're looking for a travel credit card to use, we linked that one down below.
We've been enjoying it and all the benefits.
The next thing is, when you're travelling to a new country, it is so tempting to just stick to the food you know,
and like whatever order: hamburgers or chicken, just because you're unfamiliar with the language of the dishes,
but if I can have any recommendation, a mistake you would make is not ordering lots of
typical Peruvian food. I
think it is
amazing and it's so different than anything I've ever tried even something like ceviche,
it is so different here than what we
have been eating a lot in Mexico and there are so many typical dishes that are just, oh!
crave-worthy. Yeah, the cuisine in Lima is considered some of the best in the world. So huge mistake to not eat it.
The next thing you should not do when coming to Lima is to forget to talk to your cellphone provider,
because as with many foreign countries,
Peru may not be covered under your current plan or you might have to add something to your plan to make sure you're covered once
you get here.
We figured when we got here that we would just buy a
week's worth of cell phone coverage and as it turns out it was like
$60, I think per person. (Yes) 60 US dollars for just a few days.
So, we ultimately ended up going without it and just relying on Wi-Fi and cafes and things like that,
but I do think it is sometimes nice to have data in another country (yeah, definitely),
you don't end up like trapped or not able to get a uber or something like that,
so just keep that in mind. And because we didn't have data,
we at least downloaded Google Maps for Lima on our phones
so we could access that whether or not we had data.
Yeah.
And speaking of uber, I think a big mistake would be not using it while you're here just because it's a long drive,
because on our trip, the longest trip
we've taken an uber was from the airport to Miraflores, was about 45 minutes and ended up being
approximately 11 US dollars. And that ride from the airport that was on it uberx. It's even cheaper on uber pool,
so uber is the way to go in Lima. And we think an even bigger mistake
perhaps, the biggest mistake you could make in Lima is
renting a car instead of letting the professionals handle it because
we think driving in Mexico is pretty stressful and crazy at times.
Here, it is like a whole different ballgame
I'm sitting in the car, anytime
we've been in the uber, just like white-knuckling the handles, we get out and I'm like, oh wow!
I was really tense in there because people go and cut people off and there's honking everywhere, it is
chaos,
so don't rent a car, in our humble opinion, that would be a big mistake.
(giggles)
You might want to come to Lima in the summer because that's when the weather really clears up here.
There's more sun, you can see a lot better, the sunsets are amazing
So don't go and book it in July because that's not summer here in Lima. It's the southern hemisphere,
the seasons are switched. So if you want to come in the summer, be booking around December.
However
If you think it would be a mistake to come during the high season when there are lots of tourists and a lot more people,
then the mistake would be coming in the winter/summer (the flip-flop)
and the mistake would be coming in December or something when
right now there's really not a whole lot of people around during our trip here.
It's been kind of nice to be some of the only ones and the tourist
destinations and walking around.
A mistake that we made during this trip was saving quite a few things till Sunday
and we found out that on Sunday,
quite a bit is closed;
restaurants, shops, different things like that and that's likely due to the fact that
70 to 80% of the population are Catholic, meaning Sunday is a day of rest.
(Giggles)
Also on Sunday a lots of streets are closed due to the what in Guadalajara was called "Via recreactiva"
I don't know what it's called here, but basically, they closed down streets for bicyclists, joggers people walking their dog.
So that's another thing you want to watch out for whether you're taking an uber or trying to get from point A to point B.
The next mistake you shouldn't make is to forget that the tipping culture here is probably different than what you're used to. If you look
up the tipping culture in Peru, you might see that there really isn't one throughout much of the country,
but that's different here in Lima. In Lima
it is generally expected to tip for various services and at restaurants. What should you tip?
Well, if you're going to a fancy place
it seems like 15% is pretty standard here. Whereas, a
lower to mid end restaurant
generally, 10% is what you might tip for good service here. And
whenever we've given in the card at the end of the meal, we're like on this, (spanish: with 10% tip, please.)
always their reaction is (spanish: muchisimas gracias, Muchas gracias).
Not just thank you. It's like thank you very much - emphasize.
So maybe locals don't tip that much or as frequently or something
but 10% seems to be standard and okay.
But as we've learned throughout our travels, tipping can kind of be a touchy,
sensitive topic because people think about it so differently,
especially from place to place, person to person,
so if that is not the case - if we got this wrong from our research and
experience. Experience, yeah. Let us know in the comments.
All right, next thing and this would be a big mistake
and that's thinking that cars will stop for you when you're in a crosswalk, even if you have the right of way -
you don't have the right of way here it seems, cars will not stop.
You can make eye contact and wave and try to get their attention to where they give you, like this hand signal,
but don't assume they're going to stop. We have a few times and it's been
scary (laughs).
The official language in Lima or in Peru is Spanish and
the second language is honking
(giggles).
Next mistake you should avoid making is
cancelling a trip because you don't speak Spanish.
Yes, Spanish is the first language here, but lots of people speak English and we have run into so many
foreigners here who we hear speaking English around us.
So, if you know English or Spanish, you're good to go. Or you might be thinking
well, what the heck you guys, you said the Spanish was so different there from Mexico,
so what if I only know Mexican-Spanish or Spain-Spanish and
what we notice is that it's pretty easy to understand people (assuming they're talking loud enough for you to hear them)
and
really the differences are pretty much surrounding food names, like the dish names and food ingredients,
but you really can get by if you know Spanish, even basic Spanish - I think would do the trick.
Most people know Peru because of one of the seven wonders of the world:
Machu Picchu, but the mistake that you can make is assuming
that you're pretty close to Machu Picchu when you're in Lima. It's not, it's like a fly into Lima, take another plane,
take a bus, take a train and walk a lot. It's not close,
so that would be a big mistake if you're coming here thinking you could take an uber there. (Laughs)
Yeah, lots of people asked us if we were going to Machu Picchu
and we're only here for six days during this
trip, so that would be the whole trip - the whole trip would be getting to Machu Picchu and back.
Yeah, a huge bucket list item of mine
but just not going to happen in this sort of a trip. And perhaps the stupidest mistake that we made was
forgetting that there might not be heating and cooling in our Airbnb.
There is none and we had baggage weight limits,
So one of the last things to do: were my warm
clothes for the night, my yoga pants,
sweatpants. It might not be the case for everywhere, but we're in a pretty nice Airbnb.
We don't have air conditioning or heating, in fact, in windows
there's a big hole just for all that air to come in, to freeze us out all night (laughs).
So maybe they do that for the humidity or something
but I've seen those holes in the walls and windows and stuff, in other places
so, it seems like that might be a common thing here. So you might be thinking at this point,
wow, you guys are such idiots, like everyone knows this stuff. But whenever you're travelling
there are always going to be
oversights no matter how much planning you do and how much research and how many questions you ask,
so we hope some of our oversights and some of these little things help you out in your future travels to Lima.
To be clear, not all of these were oversights on our part. We knew there was a different currency
We knew our cell phone plan wasn't going to work with things like that.
Thank you guys for watching this video today
Hope it helps you out.
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