My girlfriend and I were looking for good places to visit in November 2022. However, it’s either the beginning of colder seasons in the Northern Hemisphere or it’s spring or rainy season in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s not the best time to travel and so we narrowed possible destinations to a small list of countries. We were travelling for ~10 days and so we wanted to make sure that we weren’t traveling too far or across too many time zones.

I had been to Costa Rica and Mexico already and she had been to Portugal so a few of the closer destinations were off the list. That being said, We were considering Spain and a few other South American countries as possible destinations but given the World Cup in Qatar later in the month, it was hard to settle on a location where professional games would be paused. How can you go to Spain and not watch a game at Camp Nou or the Bernabeu?

Peru seemed to be a happy medium where it was the beginning of spring/rainy season but not too wet just yet. The temperatures would be cooler but there would be fewer tourists too… it seemed like it could work out well!

Naturally, the main attraction in Peru is Machu Picchu… but there are a ton of other amazing places too! We were fortunate to get to visit places like Paracas and Huacachina. There is also a place called Iquitos (which is the Amazon jungle) that we were considering but given we were spending four days camping and hiking to Machu Picchu, we wanted to have a quieter second half of the trip with proper showers and comfy beds.