Originally Posted by
Neil.Travel
I'm planning on bike packing Peru in the near future. My plan is to take the Toronto international airport to Cusco, travel across Peru, and finish my trip around Trujillo. From what I can gather, you can purchase a bike box from the Toronto airport for the trip there. Where I'm hitting a wall is the trip back. I'm thinking I'll use the international airport in Chiclayo to return to Toronto, but I can neither find what their policy is on bike packaging, or whether they sell the appropriate packaging.
I already have a bike which I want to use for this trip. I have it customized to my ergonomic preferences, set up for heavy cargo on the front, back, and middle, I'm used to how it handles, etc. I'm aware that I could buy a bike when in Peru, but I would really rather not. I thought of mailing the Bike box from the Cusco airport to the one in Chiclayo, but I don't know exactly how long it will take me to complete my route, (I want to go at my own pace. I might stay in some places longer or not, improvise and go off my planned route, I don't know. I don't want to commit to a strict schedule) and I don't want to get fined for storage fees, if that's a thing.
Any advice and information on how to approach this is welcome. This will be my first time going on this kind of journey.
Edit: I'm not interested in renting a bike either, for the reasons listed above.
You should never assume that you can buy a bike box at an airport, ever. Frank or Jane may tell you this on the phone, it will be airline specific anyway, but the day you get there, no boxes, then you're screwed.
Plastic bag policy is airline specific also.
Re return flights and boxes, my experience in doing this is that you will want to have 2 or 3 days in the city of return flight to have the time to search out a box. I've done this on various trips, and it's possible, you just have to be resourceful and have the language skills to communicate.
Be aware that you may have to improvise, using other boxes, making two smaller boxes into one, and or finding cardboard and making your own box. You'll have to be good at improvising and have common sense for building something sufficiently strong and taped well enough.
There are also important little packing techniques that can reduce the risk of damage to the bike, and it's your best interests to look into these, but that's up to you.
I once had come to the conclusion that I'd have to use loose cardboard to make a box, but then finally found a bike store that had new bike boxes--but in x city in Peru, don't bet on finding a full size bike box. Peru has been hit hard with COVID, so economy hit, so less rich folks buying new bikes.
Just never assume stuff is the main message here.
This basic concept of improvising, being smart, using common sense and having really good situational awareness is the name of the game anyway for a trip like you want to do.
You don't say what traveling experience you have in other countries etc etc, but for a quick bit of advice--learn some Spanish. Putting time into this is really worthwhile.
Good luck with your project