Be flexible with your destination or travel dates.

 If you know what week you have off and don’t have your heart set on a specific spot, you can get some great travel deals. I suggest first deciding on the budget for the trip because with dates and a budget, you can start shopping for flight and hotel deals. 

For flights, go back to Travel Tip #1. Put in your dates and Anywhere for the destination. For hotels, I use Booking.com and AirBnb but there are lots of other search engines that are great too.

 On the other hand, if you know your next destination has to be New Orleans (or Madagascar or Timbuktu) start playing with travel dates to see when flight prices are lowest. You should also consider hotel and car rental prices. Usually, when flight prices are low for a destination, other costs follow suit – but not always!

Besides the potential for travel deals, it’s a fun exercise in adventure to sift through the places you could go if your flight budget is $500. When I lived in Istanbul, I did a lot of weekend trips by just buying the cheapest ticket available. That landed me in some very cool spots, like Cyprus.

Latest blog: Inti Raymi 2023

Yes, Inti Raymi was two weeks ago, but I’ve been pretty busy and didn’t finish the blog till this week. It’s worth the wait! As you can tell from the photos above, the costumes were amazing, and the blog has a lot more photos. I hope you’ll agree that the Inti Raymi costumes just keep getting better every year! (Check out my 2022 and 2021 Inti Raymi blogs for comparison).

Recent article: Hotel review of Rio Sagrado

I’ve started reviewing hotels for the website Luxury Latin America. One of my favorites is Rio Sagrado in the Sacred Valley, just outside Urubamba on the way to Ollantaytambo. The property is beautiful, and the spa is very impressive, but what I loved most was feeding baby alpacas. Twice a day employees bring out a basket of baby bottles with milk for the baby alpacas that graze on the lawns all day. Click on the link above to see my full hotel review!