My wife and I are considering a trip this summer to Macchu Picchu. I'm just starting to explore this option so please bear with me. The problem I'm having is we probably won't have the points needed until the end of February for the flights. Would this be too late to find saver space for a July or early August trip? Here are the best options I've found:
United:
CVG/DAY > stopover in Bogota, Colombia for a couple days. Continue on to Cusco, Peru, and probably go straight from there to Aguas Calientes to get to a “lower” elevation. Read many reports of people having trouble acclimating to the altitude in Cusco. Anyone been to Bogota? Thumbs up/down?
- OR - Fly to Lima, stay for a few, then onto Cuzco/Aguas Calientes via Avios.
American:
No stopover allowed. Booooo. Unless someone knows a good hack.
We have zero AA miles. But, I can get the AA personal and AA biz for a total of 100k bonus points. Should be able to do this according to DoC's latest post. MS the remaining 20k needed for AA Saver Business Class. So again, we're looking at end of January or February.
CVG/DAY to Lima, Peru. Stay for a couple days, then use Avios for RT to Cusco/Aguas Calientes.
Alaska would provide an option to fly into Cusco with a stopover in Lima, but we don't have a good way to easily accrue enough Alaska miles fast enough from what I can see.
As a side note, our Spanish is very weak. We would be relying on something like Google Translate quite a bit LOL. Can us gringos get by with this and occasional friendly locals who speak English?
Any input on flights and/or inexpensive (either $ or points) but nice hotels would be appreciated. Thanks!
United:
CVG/DAY > stopover in Bogota, Colombia for a couple days. Continue on to Cusco, Peru, and probably go straight from there to Aguas Calientes to get to a “lower” elevation. Read many reports of people having trouble acclimating to the altitude in Cusco. Anyone been to Bogota? Thumbs up/down?
- OR - Fly to Lima, stay for a few, then onto Cuzco/Aguas Calientes via Avios.
American:
No stopover allowed. Booooo. Unless someone knows a good hack.
We have zero AA miles. But, I can get the AA personal and AA biz for a total of 100k bonus points. Should be able to do this according to DoC's latest post. MS the remaining 20k needed for AA Saver Business Class. So again, we're looking at end of January or February.
CVG/DAY to Lima, Peru. Stay for a couple days, then use Avios for RT to Cusco/Aguas Calientes.
Alaska would provide an option to fly into Cusco with a stopover in Lima, but we don't have a good way to easily accrue enough Alaska miles fast enough from what I can see.
As a side note, our Spanish is very weak. We would be relying on something like Google Translate quite a bit LOL. Can us gringos get by with this and occasional friendly locals who speak English?
Any input on flights and/or inexpensive (either $ or points) but nice hotels would be appreciated. Thanks!
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