Peru eSIM

Plan the first day as a light one. Cusco sits at 3,399 metres and Puno at 3,827, and most arrivals notice it immediately, which is why many itineraries drop straight to the Sacred Valley at Pisac and Ollantaytambo, several hundred metres lower, before returning to Cusco. The road between Cusco and Puno crosses the La Raya pass at 4,335 metres. Treat this as a medical matter and take local advice; it changes the shape of a trip more than any other factor here.

No road reaches the site, so the approach is a chain. From Cusco it is a drive of an hour and a half to two hours to Ollantaytambo, then a train of about an hour and a half to Aguas Calientes, then a shuttle bus of twenty-five to thirty minutes up the last eight kilometres. Each leg has its own departure, and the entry ticket itself is sold by circuit with an hourly slot, a short grace period, no re-entry and a match to the passport used to book. Hold all of it offline.

It depends which Peru, because the coast and the mountains run opposite seasons. The Andes and the Amazon have their dry season from May to October, with sunny days, cold nights in Cusco and Puno, and the best trekking; November to April brings heavy Andean rain and landslide risk. Lima inverts that, sitting grey under the garúa fog from May to October and sunny from December to April. If the trip is mountain-led, take the dry season and accept a grey capital.

There are roughly 2,400 kilometres of Pacific coast, but it is cool, desert and chilled by the current, so this is not a classic beach country. The usual stops are Paracas for boat trips to the Ballestas Islands, the desert oasis and dunes at Huacachina inland, and Huanchaco near Trujillo. Genuinely warm water sits in the far north around Máncora and Punta Sal, which is a long way from the Andean circuit and generally treated as a separate leg rather than a day trip.

Flying wins on the long legs and the buses win on the scenic ones. Lima to Cusco covers 584 kilometres in about an hour and twenty-five minutes by air, which is why almost nobody drives it. Cusco to Puno, by contrast, is roughly 380 kilometres and six to seven hours by road over a pass at 4,335 metres, with a scenic rail service as the alternative, and both are worth doing for the landscape. Decide leg by leg, and expect long stretches where nothing loads.

Only if that country is printed on the plan's own destination list. The classic pairing is Bolivia, reached from Puno by bus through the Kasani crossing toward Copacabana and La Paz, roughly seven to eight hours in total, and the short Tacna to Arica crossing leads into Chile. Ecuador is usually added by air rather than overland. At each of those borders the handset leaves one national network for another, so read the list rather than a South America heading and compare a regional package before departure.

Use available Wi-Fi at Jorge Chávez and open the setup guide supplied with your Peru purchase. Confirm that the profile is enabled and selected for mobile data, then check validity and remaining allowance. Follow that plan's exact instructions for roaming, network selection and APN; restart only if the guide directs it. A dropout in the mountains, a canyon or on Lake Titicaca does not establish its cause: reception depends on the plan, device, network and exact location. Recheck where it is safe, and contact support over Wi-Fi with the order reference, phone model and problem location if it persists.