20 days in Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina with Horizonte Tours

My wife and I, two of our friends and 4 new friends, (two other clients and two guides), recently completed Horizonte Tours "Machu Picchu: Time Warp to the Inca Empire" trip.

After looking into the logistics for doing this trip on our own, we realized that we would never find the time to plan this trip. After some internet searching the only company I found that offered a trip that visited most of the places we wanted to see was Horizonte.

Equipment, hotels, routes and restaurants were all outstanding. The guides are very professional, but personable and down to earth. It was great to have folks who were very familiar with the language, culture, history, geology, archaeology and landscapes. We would have missed many of the roadside attractions unless we had spent an inordinate amount of time researching details of these routes had we done this trip on our own. Our guides were better riders than I, and better than most. Very few people would feel that the pace was too slow. That said, no one was left behind. The sag vehicle was an awesome option, especially when one of our party suffered a near life threatening hot tub injury.

As many of you are aware, borders are the most difficult thing about a trip like this (four crossings!). We had only one hiccup on that front, and that was not the fault of our guides.

My only complaint about this trip was the lack of dirt routes. The only dirt was the Yungas/Bolivian Death Road and Salar de Uyuni lake bed. Horizonte has very good reasons for this, but if we go again on our own, we will definitely get off road more. That said, the road riding was stellar!

All of our photos are here, with some captions and such...

https://plus.google.com/114308877601352423865/posts/bwVbRm7ydEn

Map of the route:

Chilean Coast



My wife, Stephanie



Geoglyphs in the Atacama desert



Atacama

Arequipa, the "White City"



Vicuña



Colca Canyon



Altiplano and Llamas and/or Alpaca



Andes (notice Steph on the tiny little motorcycle at the bottom)

Juliaca



Catholic Church built from pre-Incan structure's stone in Pucara



Definitely buy the Alpaca slippers here, they're legit. Photo taken from 14,000 ft...



Wiracocha



Incan terraces everywhere



I don't often post selfies, but when I do, I am wearing my Inca Cola t shirt at Machu Picchu.

Looks like you guys had a great time! Damn, I'm jealous!

How many miles did you cover on the trip? How about on your longest day?

Cuzco



One of our new German friends prefers vintage rain gear



Floating islands in Lake Titicaca near Puno



View from our hotel in Copacabana Bolivia



Ferry ride



La Paz



Yungas/Death Road



On the way to Salar de Uyuni



Inside the hotel made of salt



On the salt lake bed



Isla Incahuasi

Five hundred years of mining at Potosi



On any Sunday...at any track...



Borders suck



Geology



Cactus



Tropic of Capricorn



One of our new German friends had a serious crash...he was relatively OK (VERY sore!). Our guides dealt extremely well with the situation!



Salta



Argentinian country side



Geology



Dreamy turns...



Andes



Valle de la Luna with Licancabur volcano in the distance



San Pedro de Atacama...lots of Dakar stuff throughout the whole trip

The whole trip was about 3000 miles. I think the longest day was around 300 miles? I wasn't really paying attention to mileage, another side benefit of a guided tour!