You cannot drink the water in Peru, but you can use it to wash your dishes and brush your teeth. Hot water here is definitely not a problem. At least in our airbnb. It comes out boiling hot. Like scalding, burn your skin off your hands hot immediately from the faucet hot. I mean I don’t even get water this hot out of my showers or sinks back in the US. I have to run it in my shower for 5 minutes back home before it’s warm enough to jump into in Florida. But here, you turn it on and it’s literally steaming from the sink. I have to be carefully when doing to dishes so I don’t burn my hands. When taking a shower you have to mix the cold water with the boiling hot water so you don’t get a 3rd degree burn. However, since it’s so hot so fast, you run out very quickly as well. I discovered the first time I took a shower. So no dilly dallying around in there. It starts to trickle down and it’s a game of lowering the cold water to even out the hot in the shower but within 10 minutes the hot water is gone and now you are taking a very cold shower. So you need to do your business quickly and get on with life.
It is nice to have the hot water though because in other countries Like Vietnam, Thailand or Nicaragua instead of a water heater, they have a little heater that attaches to the head of the shower and it heats it as it comes out of the shower head. So it’s not quite as effective. So you are taking more luke warm showers. I do prefer a warm shower. So this is nice now that I have figured out how to manage the very hot water situation.
Since you cannot drink the water here, they also do not offer it for free in restaurants. You always have to ask for it. Which I am not used to because back in America, as soon as you sit down, the waiter always just gives you water right away. Here that is not the case. And I drink water all the time. So you have to order it and they will ask you if you want it with or without gas. I was confused at first. That means sparkling or not. So I say, “Agua por favor sin gas.” Water please no gas. I do not like gas in my water lol.
Bottled water is very inexpensive here. You can get a liter at the grocery store for 2.5 sols which equals about .65 cents. But bring cloth shopping bags with you. They do not provide bags at the store. You can buy them but why spend more? When traveling I always bring my shopping bags just for the fact I am walking back to my apartment and those plastic bags cut through your hands. So this makes even more sense because you have to buy those plastic bags. And the big liters of water are heavy. The first time we stopped I didn’t have my shopping bags on me and I had to buy the plastic ones and I thought they were going to rip on the way back. So do yourself a favor and bring good, heavy duty shopping bags with you.
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