I’ve flown Scoot on the Sydney – Singapore route before and wasn’t particularly impressed. This time was no different.
Scoot is a typical low cost carrier who charges extra for everything such as checked in baggage and food. We fly low cost carriers a lot and some do it really well and some don’t. A great example of a good low cost carrier is Norwegian. A bad example is Scoot.
It all starts with checked in baggage which costs $42 (for the purposes of this article all prices are in Singapore/Australian dollars which are essentially the same). If you decide you need more baggage than you originally booked, of course you have to go onto their website and buy more. This is pretty normal. What isn’t normal is that if you don’t make that purchase at least 48 hours before flying, you can’t make it online at all. You have to buy it at the airport and for that they charge $100.
My departure was pushed back 45 minutes from the time stated on my travel itinerary, but I wasn’t informed of that. Again, another issue which was no big deal.
Seating on the plane has to be paid for if you want to sit in a specific spot. Of course almost no one pays for this because you generally always get to sit together with you travel companions anyway. What you can’t predict is who else is going to be seated next you. And on this flight I encountered a nightmare situation. My seat was surround by kids and one group in particular were just atrocious. When you fly full service you often get groups of kids near the bulkhead, but on this scoot flight they seemed to be scattered around everywhere. It was truly awful.
Food on the flight was expensive. Main meals run at between $12 & $15 and are small. A slim can of coke (250ml??) costs $4, a tiny water (330ml) costs $4 and a beer $8. Which brings me to my next point.
You can’t do this 7h 30m without some form of sustenance. It’s just too long. But Scoot have a policy of forbidding you to eat or drink anything on board that you haven’t bought from them. It’s outrageous and means that you’re guaranteed to spend at least $8 on 2 bottles of small water and perhaps $5 for a cup of noodles and $12 for a tray of brownness.
In my experience, you can sneak food on board and eat it, although I didn’t see anyone else doing this. I did, however, see lots of people bring water from outside. It’s $3.50 (660ml) at McDonald’s before you board the plane.
The TZ1 flight was on a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. These are nice planes, but as I’ve said before, airlines love to fit them out in a 3-3-3 configuration and 2 men sitting side by side will generally be touching shoulders for the whole flight. And forget about using the armrest because it is so narrow.
The seats on this Scoot flight were OK. Again, they were those cheap slimline seats which are fine over the course of 3 hours, but after 7 hours really get a bit old. There are no TVs in the backs of seats although I did see an advertisement for renting portable sets. Wifi is available on board at predictably exorbitant prices.
A really frustrating point about the seats, though, are the call and light buttons. They are exactly where you put your arm on the armrest. And you will forever by ringing the service bell, turning the light on, turning it off… And the whole cabin is doing it too throughout the whole flight. Constantly. It means the hosties are running up and down the aisle constantly attending to calls which are false alarms. Such a simple thing which causes all sorts of hassles for both staff and passengers.
One thing which really shits me? They charge you $5 to use the power sockets beneath your chair. What a cynical grab for extra cash. I reckon they’d probably earn $100 per flight from this revenue source at the expense of inconveniencing 200 other people. Massive thumbs down on that.
All up, if you opt for some of the extras like checked in baggage and a bit of food, your flight quickly balloons from $199 one way to something in the order of $275 which is not that cheap. It’s cheaper than any full service carrier, but it’s nowhere near as cheap as what the headline price appears to be.
Of course, this is the business model of low cost carriers, but Scoot manage to extract just that little bit more out of you. For me, they’re in the worst category of low cost carrier and in the same realms as Ryan Air. A Complete bag of shite.
All in all, an OK option if you’re flying from Sydney to Singapore. But if I have a choice again, I’ll be willing to pay an extra $100-$150 on another airline rather than put up with Scoot. Not sure how realistic that is, but seriously. Scoot is at the bottom of the pile now.
The best idea is to rent a motorbike to get around on, but if you’re not interested in riding a motorbike, there are plenty of cars and drivers available from the hotels.
We bought a lot of food for this trek and it ended up being way way too much. For some unknown reason, we just didn’t eat as much as we normally would and we brought too much emergency food. This weighed us down a lot!
Within 10 minutes it started raining lightly. Within half an hour it was really windy. Actually windier than I’ve ever experienced before so we could guess it was gusting well over 100km/h. This wind combined with the rain combined with a temperature of about 2°C was awful. Our pants were immediately soaked and our legs like blocks of ice. But we had to keep walking in that incredible headwind even as it almost blew us over numerous times.
We decided to walk up to Mirador Glacier Grey, a 4 hour round trip. The wind was strong again, but because there was no rain and we weren’t carrying our big packs, it was really easy to do and a perfect tonic for the previous day’s misery.
From there we headed back to Italiano, ate some lunch and progressed onto Cuernos. I’d never set up a tent on a wooden platform before, so that was a learning experience. I just did what everyone else before me had done and placed big rocks inside the tent in the corners to keep it from flying away. It wasn’t that windy there anyway.
At this point we stopped and talked about our plan. It seemed that we wouldn’t have enough time that day to reach the towers because we were running out of light. We also knew we wouldn’t be able to wake up the next morning, hike to the towers and then all the way back down to Amarga to catch the bus. In the end, we decided to descend out of the snow and back to Chileno.
Susan hunted down the chef again and asked if we could come inside. He instead opened up his kitchen for us, turned on the gas stove and gave us access to water. Within a couple of hours it was reasonably warm in there to the point we could take our jackets off. Big thanks to the chef at Chileno.
We commenced our trek down from Chileno to Laguna Amarga which was quite muddy by this time.
So the second option is to do it all in your own. When you visit the Colca Canyon independently, you allow yourself to pick and choose the villages to visit based on what you want to see, how tired you are and other recommendations you might get while on the trail. It is slightly cheaper to do it independently, but the freedom you get is by far the biggest benefit. And honestly, it is not complicated to do on your own. The main thing people worry about is how to get to Colca Canyon.
Buses at the time of writing depart Arequipa for Cabanaconde at 1am, 3:30am, 9:30am, 11am, 3pm and 7pm. The journey takes 6 hours, so you need to select a bus that will get you to Cabanaconde at a time that is suitable for you. If you want to trek immediately after arriving like we did, you have to catch the 3:30am bus because the 9:30am bus arrives too late to be able to trek to the bottom of the valley before it gets dark. We met a lot of people who caught the bus from Arequipa and stayed overnight in Cabanaconde first and this is a good idea if you have a lot of time.
After Llahuar, most trekkers we met either tried to go to Fure, an abandoned village with no guarantee of accommodation or the oasis town of Sangalle. Some people we met did trek all the way to Tapay as well and we think this is a great idea because Tapay doesn’t get so many visitors. It’s a long trek to Tapay from Llahuar, so allow about 8 hours inclusive of a stop for lunch at Malata. San Juan is 7 hours or slightly less if you’re fast. Sangalle is 5 hours or slightly less if you’re fast, but doesn’t include a stop for lunch because you actually bypass Malata.
From Roy’s (9am) we climbed for a couple of hours up to Cosñirhua and then along the flat road to Malata (11:13am) where we ate a fantastic but simple lunch at a random shop. At 12pm we continued our walk towards Llahuar and we basically didn’t stop walking for the next 4 hours until 4pm. In all it took us 7 hours from San Juan to Llahuar and it was honestly quite brutal. Lots of uphill at the start and lots of downhill at the end. The middle section was only a slight uphill, but it was in the blistering sun, so it just sapped all our energy. Thankfully the hot springs at Llahuar were totally worth it.
The two farms which are most advertised are El Ocaso and Don Elias. El Ocaso is the main one people go to as it’s the one most set up for the tourist trade and even has a guesthouse on site. Always looking for something a little different, we chose Don Elias which is a family run organic coffee farm. Simply walk 5km to the west of town down Carrera 5 and you will reach the farm. It’s actually just past El Ocaso and you will see signs all along the way so you’ll know you’re on the right road. The views along this road are excellent and it is such a pleasant walk!
When you’re done at the coffee farm, you can either walk back the way you came or walk up the driveway of El Ocaso and just before you enter their main compound, follow their fenceline on the right. Don’t turn down the road on the right. Just follow their fenceline down to the river and across the bridge. After crossing the bridge, turn right and follow that road along the river all the way to the main road. From here you can flag down a bus back into Salento. All in all a great day out. Some people also continue from the main road until a waterfall in the hills (Cascada Santa Rita), but that was way too much for us.
After about 1km, there is a small farm gate with a guy sitting under a sun shade. Enter here. From here you will pay the guy, start climbing up out of the valley and get great views of the spectacular trees. We initially missed this turn off and ended up 1km down the road and next to a river — wrong turn!
After a rest, start your descent. At this time you will meet other trekkers coming the other way. Keeping trekking until you reach a fork in the path and turn left (there is a sign). This path through the forest leads to the hummingbird sanctuary called Acaime. After a 20 minute walk you’ll reach the sanctuary, pay your 5,000 pesos entry fee and receive a cup of hot chocolate. The hummingbirds are awesome to watch and we actually spent about an hour there photographing them and eating our lunch.
After the hummingbirds, take the same path back but instead of heading back up hill at the fork, continue along the river, crossing numerous bridges. This part of the walk dragged on and on for us and took about 2 hours.
Apart from that, there’s not a whole lot else to do in town except wander around and enjoy the small town vibe. We loved it and I hope you do too!
But the problem with the 787 is that airlines love to pack passengers in like sardines even more than they usually do. The legroom I had was more than adequate and I’m 5″11′ (181cm). But it’s the fact that airlines including Norwegian insist on a 9 abreast seating configuration when 8 abreast is ideal for economy cabins. The means seats and arm rests are extremely narrow. I’m a normal sized guy. Maybe on the light side of things. But when I sit next to another man on a 787, my shoulders touch his. This is torture on long haul because you’re constantly fighting for shoulder space. Luckily for me on this flight to LAX, the guy next to me was short with narrow shoulders. I actually felt comfortable for the entire flight! But your luck certainly can vary. If you’re next to a big person or you yourself are big, this will be a nightmare flight.
Each seat has an entertainment unit which also serves as your online shop for the snack bar.
But the interesting part about the entertainment system is the snack bar. You simple scroll through the list of items they have for sale, pick what you want and scan your credit card. About 5 minutes later a hostess will deliver your order to your seat. I’m sure they get lots of orders this way.
Snacks included muffins for US$4, Pringles US$3.50, hot snacks (like a panini) for US$7, vegetarian sandwiches US$7, chocolate bar US$2.50, salad US$9 and noodle pot for US$4. Again, not cheap, but not so bad if you got a great deal on the flight. And besides, if you want cheap, you simply bring your own food and don’t buy theirs.
One last comment on the aircraft itself. I don’t think there are enough toilets onboard. There was a line for the toilets for the entire flight. The red light indicating the toilets were occupied never went green. It’s really odd because I’d never seen that before. Ah well, if you’re desperate, you just have to wait 15 minutes in line. And maybe you need to stretch your legs anyway.
First stop is to pay the National Park entry fee which is MX$65. Get back on the same collectivo and you will be taken to the ticket office for the ruins (there is one ticket booth for the national park and one for the ruins in separate locations). Pay the driver MX$20 per person for his services and get on your way.
You’ll be dropped off at the turn off to Agua Azul where there are pickup trucks waiting to take you to the entrance. Pickup trucks are MX$20 per person which is a ripoff, but walking isn’t really an option unless you arrive really early in the day, have heaps of time and no money. Entry to the waterfall is MX$40. The waterfall is a stunning blue and it’s worth having a dip in the pristine waters. Sadly, much of the area is off limits for reasons unknown, but rumoured to be related to safety.
