The Peru Hop Debacle

Settle in, because this could be a long one...

In the course of planning how to get from Lima to La Paz, we came across a hop on, hop off bus company by the name of Peru Hop. A quick Google search brings up glowing trip advisor reviews and a glossy website, complete with safety guarantees and pictures of the modern coaches they use. We didn't hesitate at spending a considerable amount (around £200 each) for a 6 day tour, taking in the sites of Peru as this worked out to be cheaper than a flight.

Fast forward to our first few days in South America. The bus company seemed to deliver as promised, with comfy buses which included reclining seats, a toilet, USB charging ports, English speaking guides and GPS trackers to monitor driver speeds, all things designed to make long journeys (sometimes over 8 hours) more bearable and of course safe.

The bus we paid £200 for...

It was in Huacahina that the perfect picture began to crumble, when the company attempted to force us on to a small 9 seater run down mini van for a travel time of around 6 hours with stops. With no leg room and none of the aforementioned comforts or safety guarantees, the tiny van was filled to capacity with 8 adults. A number of passengers including ourselves asked to speak to the operations office (after all, we paid for a state of the art coach with safety features, not a tiny van with a driver in flip flops!). Eventually, after some heated discussion, it turns out a coach which we had been told was full, actually had a couple of spare seats and we were able to travel in the vehicle we actually paid for.

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A few days later we were heading to Puno, a city at around 3800m above sea level, when we were told that we would be dropped an hour outside as coaches were not allowed in the streets. Instead we were put in another run down van, had our bags strapped to the roof and had to endure an hour of the most horrendous and dangerous driving on Peru's already less than safe roads.

Our driver insisted on exceeding the speed limit, driving on the wrong side of the road, over taking on blind bends and speeding towards hazards. This resulted in two very near misses, one involving a coach towards which our driver sped up instead of slowing down, resulting in the need to swerve into the opposite lane of traffic. The second was much more serious and left everyone in the bus shaken. A child was running across the road ahead, the driver saw him and started beeping his horn instead of slowing down. Given he was already significantly speeding, the boy was very very nearly run over in front of us. It was incredibly lucky that the child was not hit, because if he had been, we're sure he would have been killed.

...what actually turned up.

After finally making it to Puno and checking the bus company website, we read they are supposedly keen to hear feedback on their drivers to maintain their safety record. We called the office straightaway to make them aware of the incident and ask what could be done to prevent something similar on next journey. With the same tone by which they address negative comments on trip advisor, one of the founders called Pete was incredibly defensive and acidic, implying that they had never ever before received a complaint of the nature we described (this is obviously untrue as most the negative comments online about the company focus on the fact their drivers are just as unsafe as any others!). After an hour on the phone, it was left that they would investigate the incident and that we would catch our bus as normal in the morning.

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Two hours later (conveniently once their office had closed so we couldn't call them back), we received an email, the very first line of which stated they had cancelled our tickets with immediate effect. This was without any discussion and in fact contradicted what we had agreed on the phone. Whilst they offered a nominal refund for part of our trip, being abandoned in a foreign country for raising issues of dangerous driving and unsafe vehicles was a complete shock to us and not something we expected from a premium service charging around 4 times more than the local rate for buses.

To add insult to injury, the last line of their email was friendly reminder that buses in Peru get hijacked and we were sarcastically wished good luck with the local options.

TL;DR anyone who promises safe bus travel in Peru is lying to you and you may as well spend far less using local transport which is a fraction of the cost and in most cases uses the same drivers/buses

We will be posting again regarding making our own way from Puno to La Paz (spoiler alert: it was actually relative stress free and not at all as difficult or dangerous as the money grabbing bus company had implied!)