North Or South?

If I wanted to get a couple beach days in the north where would you suggest? South sounds fun but I'm also hoping to get some beach days in. I would love to do northern highlands (kuelap, chachapoyas) but it sounds as if this is not the best time of year to go and I should stick to the coast after cusco.

If you want beaches go to Thailand ;-)

Honestly beaches in Peru are not particularly special. Huanchaco may be the closest big name beach to Lima but there are far better ways to spend 16 hours than driving there and back!

Its kind of like going to Italy and wanting to eat Indian food. You might really like Indian food but you would be crazy not to enjoy the local speciality.

I also don't think of the beach when I think of Peru. I have heard Mancora and Punta Sal mentioned but would you travel that far for a couple of days? We were not focusing on the beach at all so I can't really help you. We did stay in Huanchaco and enjoyed it but we only went to the beach to look at the reed boats. Again, I love northern Peru but it is true that travel could be difficult if it rains a lot. We took that gamble in January 2016 and it was mostly dry but we were lucky. Maybe you could wait to see how rainy this year will be. If you do end up going south Paracas has beaches. I liked the ones in the Paracas reserve. But you don't have to go to the coast if you think going north is too risky. Arequipa and the Colca Canyon are great too.

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