2 weeks itinerary to get from Santiago to Machu Picchu and back

It's a mystery why you are flying into Santiago if you want to visit Machu Picchu in Peru, which is about 3000 km by road to the north. But anyway, some sort of plan.

I'd say fly to Calama, Chile from Santiago on Sky air, which is cheap if you book well in advance. From Calama you can get to San Pedro de Atacama by bus in a few hours time. From San pedro, you can book a 3 day tour of the Uyuni salt flats and the nearby high altiplano including numerous high mountain lakes featuring flamingos, etc. It's a standard tour route by jeep transport, and you will sleep in very basic type hotels. Be sure to have warm clothes and a winter hat.

From Uyuni you can either fly to La Paz or take a long overnight bus ride there. From La Paz, Bolivia, you'd use bus to go north to Lake Titicaca, either to Copacabana in Bolivia, or to Puno in Peru. Then spend a night out on one of the lake islands, Isla del Sol going from Copa, or Isla Taquille going from Puno. Isla del Sol is preferred by most travelers, but would add one day to your itinerary, since you can go to Cusco in a day from Puno, but most people would need 2 days to travel Copacabana to Cusco.

Then you want a day or 2 in Cusco, and move on to Machu Picchu. You need to book the train ticket to MP in advance, and the MP site tickets too. At the last minute you might not get tickets, and certainly couldn't climb Huaynu pichhu peak. Starting from Santiago and including Bolivia in 2 weeks there's no way you could include a hiking route in Peru. You have barely enough time to do the route listed above.

Then at the end fly back to Santiago via Lima (that will not be cheao), or much better would be to rearrange your flight out of South America to depart from Lima.

thanks for your advice mstep, i probably should have mentioned that I would like to see some of Chile as well which is one of the reason I'm flying into there. Another reason is that from Australia you simply can't fly into places like you can from the states or europe. If 2-weeks is all I've got then thats that, no reason not to be ambitious though.

So if you want to see parts of Chile + Bolivia + Peru, your request for a $1500 US itinerary is impossible. You don't have time for the land travel, and doing it by flying place to place, you don't have the money.

i appreciate your input, hopefully someone might have some cost effective ideas. I'll let you know when i manage it though, cheers.

You don't have the time and you don't have the money. Simple as that. Travel time is going to eat up a lot of your trip and you are going to see very little. Going to Cusco/Machu Picchu is expensive. Whilst both that and the salt flat tours are excellent destinations they are going to be difficult to combine in a short time frame and at low cost.

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