Planning: Part 1

This is certainly the largest trip for which I myself have been performing the planning. Well, even
that is not a totally fair statement as we are using a travel agency (that is based in Perú) for much
of the planning. Joe is helping me make decisions, but I am certainly doing the majority of the hard
work in planning the trip.

The travel agency we are using is called PeruTourism/Peru4Me/Viajes Pentagrama. They go by different
names depending (I think) on the nationality being served. Being American, I know them as
PeruTourism. Here is the website: http://www.perutourism.com/ I am nervous about
trusting a third party to act as middle-man. Though, I would probably be much more nervous if I were
doing all of the work making reservations, buying tickets, etc.--especially considering I could not
take care of some things until I am there in Perú. So far, they have been pleasant to work with and
not too overpriced. (If you know me, then you know I'm a real Fred Mertz. So I think everything is
overpriced.) I am sure to be reporting more about how well things turned out in regard to PeruTourism.

I did book our airline tickets to and from Perú myself. PeruTourism will book our travel within Perú.
I used Orbitz.com to book our tickets. I was planning on flying out
of Louisville, probably to Miami (through a connecting city), onward to Lima. That changed, however.
Because we are flying in July in August, prices are rather high--tourism season at its peak. I decided
to spend the time (and considerable effort) searching every feasible route to Perú for what was cheapest.
I even made a chart recording price variations for the best day of the week on which to purchase tickets
for that route. After several weeks of this pain (and it was that), I finally found something that
seemed as low-priced as I was likely to find before our departure date.

SO! We are flying out of Cincinnati airport (which is actually in Northern Kentucky). Joe is from
there, so his family are going to drive us to the airport and we will leave our car at their home.
See: I said I was cheap. I won't even pay for leaving my car at the airport. From there, we fly to
Charlotte via US Airways. In Charlotte, we fly again on US Airways to Miami. There, we switch to LAN
Airlines to fly to Lima. The return trip is exactly the same except, obviously, in reverse order.

Oddly, it was cheaper to buy the tickets from Orbitz.com rather than directly from the airlines' websites.
Usually, at least, the airline's website lists the same airfare for the same (and sometimes lower)
price than the travel aggregation websites. It turned out, though, that I saved a couple of hundred
dollars by using Orbitz.com. By flying out of Cincinnati rather than Louisville or any other nearby
port, we saved somewhere along the lines of $400.

Oh, and in case you're curious, I did indeed query the airlines' websites that do not submit to travel
aggregation websites (such as Southwest, etc.). This is one of the various reasons it was such a pain
to find the cheapest airfare.

In any event, I will be reporting more on the planning process as we progress toward July. ¡Viva el
Perú glorioso!