Becoming a Hopster

So on the 19th of September, as I was picked up from next to my hostel, I officially became a Hopster. That is not a sentence I ever thought I’d say or write. Or any similar sentences for that matter. And yet I have no regrets.

As our time in Cusco was drawing to a close, we were obviously planning our next steps. These steps included common stops on the popular southern loop from Cusco to Lima, also known in Peru as the ‘gringo trail’. Our first instinct was to start researching the different bus companies for their safety records, timetables, style of seats (for the night buses) etc. This was proving to be a tricky undertaking when we were recommended to look at PeruHop.

PeruHop is a company that provides a transport service for the destinations between Lima and Cusco, in other words, the exact places we were looking at travelling to. The premise is that they have buses running certain stages of the loop at the same time every day. You buy a ticket by stating your initial and final destinations and then you plan the intervening time to fit with your travel plans. You can spend as long as you like in any of the destinations you visit, you just have to book onto the appropriate bus that is leaving when you wish to do so. These buses pick you up and drop you off in the centre of the towns you visit, rather than at the bus terminals, which are generally away from the centre and are not necessarily the safest of places to be. You can also change these bookings at least 12 hours in advance of the bus leaving. This provides you with a great deal of flexibility whilst also removing the hassle of organising your own transport. Each bus also has a guide to give you information and to help you plan your travelling, such as for accommodation and activities at each stage. The company itself has links to certain accommodations that you can get a discount for, whilst it can also book you on certain activities (you need to pay extra for these activities). There are also smaller, free activities that are included with the ticket. This all seems like a great deal but obviously this comes at a price, both figuratively and literally, as it is more expensive than if you were booking everything individually. It also means that you loose part of the experience of travelling, given that you will be almost exclusively travelling with other tourists rather than locals.

To help us make our decision, we visited the PeruHop office in Cusco. This office is a bit out of the way in the San Blas district but it was worth the walk up to it. The person at the desk spoke the best English of any Peruvian we met during our trip around the country and detailed the whole process very thoroughly, clearing up any misconceptions or things that we were confused about. She also made clear some changes to the service, brought about by the COVID situation. Basically, because there are less tourists due to the pandemic, some of the bus companies are now working together to minimise the number of buses and, therefore, their expenses. For PeruHop, this means that for a large portion of the loop, you travel in a local bus rather than a PeruHop bus. The trade-off is that they now have their guides pick you up from your accommodation, take you to the bus terminals and organise your tickets for you. You are then picked up at your destination and taken to your accommodation.

Given that I am very behind in writing this blog, I can write about my experiences with PeruHop, having completed my time with them. Overall, we are very happy that we decided to go with the company. Given that we spent longer in Cusco than we were originally intending, and that we also wanted to explore some of the north of the country before our flight to Ecuador, we didn’t actually have loads of time to complete the loop. The time that we saved in not having to organise our own transport really helped in allowing us to fit in everything we wanted to do, in the shortest time period possible. Even the help in navigating the chaos that is sorting bus tickets in several of the bus terminals was greatly appreciated. We also used PeruHop to organise several activities during our trip and they were all very enjoyable and the companies that PeruHop coordinated with were all very professional. You may be able to find similar activities for a bit cheaper if you really look, but from the research I did the prices were all competitive.

There were, of course, some negatives from the journey. Whilst not a ‘negative’ as such, we didn’t book any accommodation through PeruHop, as we found better options for cheaper by sorting it ourselves. The main thing that was a bit of a shame was related to the direction we were travelling. If you were travelling from Lima to Cusco, the guides were travelling in the same direction and thus you were more able to make a bond and it would have been easier to organise things as you went. Given that we were going in the opposite direction, it meant that we had a different guide at every point in the trip. Whilst not a huge problem, as they were all good at what they did, it did make things a bit more disjointed. It was also a shame that we weren’t mainly using the PeruHop buses, as they seemed to be of better quality than a lot of the local ones.

But, we definitely think it was worth booking with them. And in the end, if you factor in the prices for the buses and the taxis you would have had to get, it probably didn’t work out as too much more expensive than organising everything yourself, whilst it saved an awful lot of time, hassle and stress. So, as long as you are not on a very tight budget, we would definitely recommend going with PeruHop.