About Peru Hop And Its Founders

We started Peru Hop to give people a safe, easy and cheap way to get around Peru, after our own experience showed us that whilst Peru is a beautiful country, getting around here is a pain in the ass (Peru has 1 of the worst transport systems in the world, unsafe taxis, and not many people speak English).

As well as this, there are some places impossible to get to on public transport and many tourists who have been to Peru actually have seen less than half of what this country has to offer . Peru Hop is all about discovering the REAL Peru through the eyes of a local Peruvian.

Our local Peruvian experts know this country much better than any guidebook. For example, the Lonely Planet is released every 2 or 3 years, and is actually written by foreign tourists. It is outdated and really does not give you a local insight into Peru.

Peru Hop offers all the benefits of traveling alone (you choose where to go, how long to stay there) combined with the benefits of a tour (meeting other people and a local guide on board giving you local insights to their country). Our unique hop on hop off system allows you to travel as quickly or as slowly as you want. You choose what to do, where to eat and where to sleep… our onboard guides just give you tips and advice. Whether you want a one week trip fully planned in advance, or just hop on a bus and decide as you go, Peru Hop is perfect for every type of traveler.

Read more about how we started Peru Hop to know why we truly believe in offering people the best possible trip to Peru, or read our reviews page to see what some of our 250,000 ex-passengers have said about us.

I, Will, one of the Irish co-founders of Peru Hop, travelled South America in 2010 and met a Peruvian girl along the way who convinced me to come back to Peru for a vacation in 2011. On that vacation, she was trying to convince me that I could live in Peru, so proceeded to take me all over the country, proudly showing me how great Peru was.

I was honestly blown away… I had not realised Peru had so many incredible places to see and so many things to do. She taught me about the cultures here, about the history of Peru, and took me to many local restaurants where I ate some of the best food of my life!

Honestly, I was shocked, because 1 year earlier I had spent 10 days in Peru, but after seeing Peru with this girl, I felt that on my original trip I saw NOTHING compared to what she showed me.

In the end, the girl (by then my girlfriend) won (the woman always wins haha) and convinced me to move to Peru in late 2012.
However, before I moved to Peru, I was given permission for 1 last trip with my friends to New Zealand, where I took a bus called Stray that all my friends had recommended to me. At first, I thought it was a tour (I was not a fan of tours as I felt it was all about big groups walking around everywhere together with no freedom) but after looking into it more, I realised that it was a hop-on, hop-off service that covered the whole country.

I had never seen anything like this before… it was like a tour, with the benefits of meeting people and a local guide, but I still had the freedom to stay anywhere I wanted longer or eat wherever I wanted to eat. Not only that, but I remember the bus stopping at places and thinking to myself “how the heck would I have found this place by myself!”. I spent 3 weeks with Stray, and it was honestly the best trip I ever had and I made 18 friends on that bus that I am still in contact with today.

So after moving to Peru, I started to think about what I could do here (I am an accountant by profession). I had no Spanish but some savings which luckily let me be able to spend 3 or 4 months thinking of various ideas. There was 1 idea I could not get out of my head… the Peru hop-on, hop-off concept. It simply HAD to work here in my opinion, because if it worked in New Zealand, then it would definitely work in Peru where taxis are dangerous (unlicensed and without taxi metres), nobody on public bus services speak English and there are a lot of accidents, and other tour operators charge $2,000+ and rip tourists, who are worried about safety, off! I came up with the name Peru Hop but I was still convinced I couldn’t do it… what would I know about running buses across Peru… sure I don’t even have a drivers licence!!

It was only when some friends came to Peru and I told them the idea, and they agreed to help me do more research, that I start believing Peru Hop would become possible. Through various contacts, I met Pete (from the UK living in Peru) and Paolo (a local Peruvian) who would become my co-founders, and then somehow I convinced my childhood friend Conor to move to Peru and join us. The 4 of us got together, totally underestimating how hard it would be, but somehow got our 1st bus on the road on October 28th 2013!

We thought the buses would be instantly full… we could not have been more wrong. Peruvian travel agencies just did not understand the hop-on, hop-off concept. Our buses were departing with 2 or 3 people. We were losing a lot of money, but those 2 or 3 people on each bus kept telling us “this service is incredible, trust us, it will be huge” and so we kept working and working and doing whatever it took. We could not afford to do much marketing, so we really relied on word of mouth, and luckily for us, after around 18 months, we reached a point where word of mouth had spread so much that our buses started to get busier and busier.

Today, we are extremely grateful for everything we have. We know that this has come due to us treating those 2 or 3 passengers on each bus like kings and queens. Treat people well and they will do all your marketing for you. That is a philosophy we still follow today, and we are proud that we have a local Peruvian team, of guides and customer service agents, that are the friendliest and most helpful people you will meet. They are proud to represent their country, and they know that if we help more tourists see that Peru is an amazing and safe place, it will help the local economy here in Peru where unfortunately many people live in poverty.

We know we are far from perfect, but we promise that we always have the best intentions, and as fellow travellers ourselves, we will do our very very best to ensure you that your hard earned vacation to Peru is the BEST vacation you will ever have.

Thanks for reading

Will, Conor, Pete and Paolo

A golden rule that we have in Peru Hop is that all our guides must be from Peru. We believe this makes Peru Hop very authentic, as your guide will become your friend and give you a real insight into what life is like living in Peru (where the minimum salary is $300 a month…obviously Peru Hop pays more than this) and what it was like for them growing up in Peru 20 or 30 years ago.

We work hard to ensure only the friendliest, most humble and hard-working Peruvians can join our guide team. If you read the history of Peru Hop here you will see how word of mouth from ex-passengers is the whole reason Peru Hop has grown to what it is today. That is mainly thanks to our guides. They are the face of our company, and represent us, the founders, every day with direct contact with our passengers.

Our guides know that this is probably the only time you will ever visit Peru. They know that you have worked hard to save money for this trip and that you want to maximise it. They know that tourism can help the economy here grow. They know that if they give you local tips on where to eat the best local food cheaply, or tell you funny stories about growing up in Peru, that you guys will fall in love with Peru and tell all of your friends and family how great Peru is which will help this country to grow stronger.

Aside from being proud Peruvians who are so proud to represent their country, our guides speak excellent English (If they can understand us Irish co-founders then they can understand everybody!) and know the history and culture of this country incredibly well. They are great humble people and we are sure you will love your Peru Hop guide, and if you ask them nicely, I am sure they will even teach you some salsa moves or some bad Spanish words you can shout at the next taxi driver that tries to rip you off!

As with everything, we are not perfect, and so after your trip, we ask for feedback on any guides you met along the way, and all comments are flagged to us, the founders, so please note that we will review any issue that you maybe have, although thankfully it is very rare we have customer issues in relation to our guides.

Our customer service team are the brains behind Peru Hop! They are a great mix of local Peruvians, and a couple of ex-pats who live here, who have worked so hard to establish themselves as the best customer service team in the travel industry in Peru. Many reviews of Peru Hop often mention how people were almost shocked about how quickly and how in-detail our team replied to them.

Again, we know you are planning a dream trip to Peru, or maybe you are already here in Peru, and that if you contact us with a question, it is because you need help. Our job is to help people…Peru Hop as a concept was set up to HELP people get to across Peru safely and securely. Our team will always try to give you the most helpful answer possible in the quickest time possible.

Our team are Peruvian Travel Experts, and we have built up a database of questions and issues from the last 6 years that means there is almost no question we have not been asked before. We promise you that whatever the question or request that you have, our team will always try their best to give you a solution.

Again, as with everything, any issues you report to our team are ALWAYS flagged to the co-founders. We are aware of everything, so please, if for some reason our team have not answered you as well as they could have, let them know and you can be sure that we will review that and see how we can improve, but again, it is very rare people are not extremely happy with our customer service team.

Whatever the question or request that you have, send it on and the team will get back to you as soon as possible. There are various ways to contact us here