So, last week we were super excited to report that we booked our RTW tickets for our trip starting in October!
You are probably wondering why we booked our tickets so early. After all we still have 9 months before we leave!
Yes, I know it’s very early and many hard core travellers will think we are over-planning this whole trip a bit (which might be true, this is our first big trip so we will see once we hit the road). When I first started planning this trip I read all sorts of travel blogs and books about travelling and many of them have some sort of time line to help you with your planning.
Most of these will tell you to book your plane tickets around 4-6 months before your leaving date, so it is true, we are a bit early, and there is a good reason for this.
Our first stop will be Peru where we will be hiking the Inca trail, one of the biggest highlights of our entire trip! Yay! The Inca trail is one of the most popular hiking routes in the whole world and scores of tourists hike it every year. This leads to environmental problems and also to damages to some of the archaeological sites along the trail. Therefore the Peruvian government has put in strict limits and regulations to protect the trail and the people working on it. Only 500 permits are issued every day. This might sound like quite a lot but these 500 permits have to also cover all the guides, porters and cooks, who accompany every group. That means that less than half of the permits actually go to tourists and therefor the trail can get booked up early on in the year.
Booking your RTW tickets early has certain advantages and disadvantages. All airlines release their tickets 11 months in advance, so this makes booking early a bit tricky as you have to use so-called dummy dates for the flights which haven’t been released yet. But it is possible.
On the other hand, by booking early on you can save quite a lot of money as tickets do tend to get more expensive the closer it gets to your departure date. And if you are planning big activities early on in your trip it allows you to book them far in advance making sure you don’t miss out.
So there you go. Our RTW tickets are sorted which leaves us plenty of time to book the Inca Trail on our desired dates. It might be over-planning but remember, I’m half German, I like to be prepared.