[DECEMBER 2024 UPDATE – The procedure for getting a Yellow Fever vaccine has changed a bit since this post was written two years ago! Be sure to scroll down to the comments section to read the recent experiences of readers who had to do some things differently!]
Thankfully, through some internet research, and the kindness of local medical professionals, we were able to get our yellow fever vaccines for FREE in Cusco, Peru! Considering that yellow fever vaccines can run $200+ each in the USA, getting these freebies was quite the cheap travel windfall.
If you need a yellow fever vaccine and are in Cusco, Peru hopefully, our experiences will help you out.
So let us show you how we got our free yellow fever vaccines!
A TTT Guide to Getting a Free Yellow Fever Vaccine
Yellow feveris a nasty, mosquito-borne hemorrhagic disease endemic to tropical regions of Central and South America, as well as Africa. Caused by a virus, it can produce fever, headache, jaundice, muscle pain, nausea, vomiting, and fatigue. And in very severe cases, death.
So if you know you will be residing in yellow fever territory for a significant period of time, it would be unwise to forgo the yellow fever vaccine. In fact, many countries, or national parks within countries, won’t let you in unless you show proof of vaccination!
In our case, traveling to Colombia wasn’t an issue, vaccine or not. Colombia border control will let you through in either case. It was that many of the national parks of Colombia won’t let you in without it! And since our Airbnb in Taganga, Colombia is on the fringes of one of these parks, we’d be foolish not to get vaccinated.
That, and yellow fever isn’t fun either.
There is an abundance of dated and anecdotal information online on how to get free (or very cheap) yellow fever vaccines in Peru. And some of this information is specific to Cusco, Peru. The problem is that these reports are from pre-COVID times when the world operated differently. And since these reports are at least six years old, one shouldn’t take their advice at face value.
Thankfully, as slow travelers, we have more time and flexibility to figure out things like this than most people. So we did!
That said, if you are going to follow our advice (accurate in December 2022) go in with a flexible attitude as some of the nuances of the process may change depending on circumstances.
Besides, this is good advice for traveling in Latin America in general!
Getting a Free Yellow Fever Vaccine in Cusco, Peru
So you’re in Cusco, Peru and you’ve decided that getting a free yellow fever vaccine is a sweet deal.
What should you do?
Here is our step-by-step process:
STEP 1: Go to the Regional Hospital of Cusco on Wednesday
Wednesdays are free yellow fever vaccine days at the Regional Hospital of Cusco. They have a limited supply of free, government-subsidized yellow fever vaccines (only 10 every Wednesday) so show up at 8 am, when the hospital opens its doors.
The pedestrian entrance is on the immediate left (open).
Follow the walkway into the hospital campus.
Make sure to bring your passport and a mask! The hospital won’t let you enter without a mask.
Yes, there is a guard at the gate that enforces this.
STEP 2: Go to the Hospital Caja
Go immediately to the Caja (= cashier) and ask for a “Vacuna de Fiebre Amarilla” (= yellow fever vaccine) and “Tarjeta Internacional de Vacuna de Fiebre Amarilla” (= International Yellow Fever Vaccination Card). Note that you may have to wait in line at the caja.
The caja is on the left side of the walkway, under an overhang.
Caja closeup!
If your Spanish is not good, I recommend writing down exactly what you need on paper (in Spanish) and showing it to the cashier. Frustration will be minimized for all involved.
The vaccine should be free and the international yellow fever vaccination card (required for international travelers) is 50 Soles($13.17 USD). Keep in mind at the local private clinics, the vaccine alone can run 180 Soles or more. And you still will need to buy the international yellow fever vaccine card!
Pay the caja, and you will receive a receipt for the services you bought. You will need the receipt in STEP 3.
Take your receipts to the vaccination station! (STEP 3)
STEP 3: Go to the Hospital Vaccination Station
Go to the vaccination station at the far back, right-hand side of the hospital campus. If you can’t find it, ask any of the security guards or volunteers for help. They will be glad to do so!
From the caja, walk towards the back of campus, veering to the right as you go.
Keep going. Follow the middle path that goes behind the building on the right.
Keep going, following the sidewalk off to the right.
You’ll come to a corner that turns left…
Almost there…
You made it!
Price list on the vaccination center bulletin board.
Give them your receipt from STEP 2, as well as your passport. They will then shoot you up with the vaccine, and fill out the international yellow fever vaccination card for you.
CONGRATULATIONS – You Got Your Free Yellow Fever Vaccine!
SUCCESS!
Simple, right?
This is how things work during normal times.
However, we showed up at the hospital in the middle of the December 2022 political protests, and they didn’t have ANY yellow fever vaccines available because of the disrupted supply chain!
So what did we do?
Nothing Is Ever Easy – Two Travel Turtles Get Vaccinated!
Thankfully, the vaccination nurse at the Regional Hospital of Cusco was super helpful.
If successful, we were to get a receipt of services from the nurse who injected us, then bring the receipt back to the Regional Hospital of Cusco so they could give us our completed international yellow fever vaccination cards.
Apparently international yellow fever vaccination cards are super rare in Cusco, with the Regional Hospital of Cusco being the only local provider!
After entering, we noticed an information station on the left side of the hallway, with a security guard in attendance. We asked the guard about the availability of yellow fever vaccinations, and he told us to wait while he inquired.
He returned and explained that a nurse would be able to see us at 11 am. Since it was 8:45 am at that point, we decided to walk to the Real Plaza Cusco (a fancy mall) to kill some time.
We walked back to the Health Center of Clas Wanchaq at 11 am. The same security guard who helped us before brought us to an office where a nurse took our passport information and gave us yellow fever vaccinations FOR FREE!
The Health Center of Clas Wanchaq must be a public facility, we assume, for the vaccines to be free. We were fully prepared to pay at that point!
The nurse then gave us a signed affidavit stating that we received the yellow fever vaccine, which we then took back to the Regional Hospital of Cusco.
And after paying the caja for our international yellow fever vaccination cards, we returned to the vaccination station and received them, with all of the necessary signatures and stamps from the medical staff.
Sweet!
Hopefully, fellow travelers will find this information helpful. Now go get your free yellow fever vaccine!
And feel free to buy us a coffee if we’ve saved you money. Thanks in advance!
Until next time…
Thanks for reading!
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This was so helpful! My partner and I did this on June 1, 2023. We went to the Health Center of Clas Wanchaq on a Wednesday after noon (we missed the regional hospital free period in the morning) so the next day we went to the regional hospital on Thursday morning. We paid 100 soles for 2 international passes and then 311 soles for 2 vaccines, around 45 USD.
It took about 1 hour counting a few jogs to the ATM around the corner because we didn’t have enough cash. The nurse was SO helpful and walked us over to the cashier when we didn’t understand we needed to pay more for the commercial shot.
Hope our experience helps you too! Now we’re off to Bolivia!
Thanks for the info!! I managed to do this today/ Wednesday/ Dec 13 2023 . They STILL don’t have the Yf vax at Regional Hosp. But they are still the only place with the travel card. So I had to go to Health center Wanchaq to get it then return to Regional for the card. Wanchaq wanted me there at 10. It was 10 soles for the vax at the caja at Wanchaq and 50 soles for the card at Regional. The regional folks at the vax center in the back right are only there 8-12 but they are there every day. So you could get the vax at Wanchaq any day and take your receipts to regionL the next day 8-12
Thanks for the feedback Danielle! Glad to see that the travel card cost hasn’t increased, even if Wanchaq charges a little now. If memory serves, that may be because they are out of subsidized vaccine doses. Even still, you got a really good deal! Happy everything worked out for you.
Thank You for sharing this useful information. I am looking to get this vaccine for the sake of future travel as it’s a lifetime vaccine. Currently I’m in cusco and will go on salkantay trek day after tomorrow. And then to bolivia for 1 week. However I’m not going to amazon and I got my bolivia visa last week in Lima (Indian passport holder living/working in USA). So for my case it’s not mandatory to get this vaccine to enter bolivia.
Only question I have is, are there any side effects after the vaccination? I originally planned to get this vaccine at the end of my trip before returning, as it’s almost cheap here compared to $450-$500 in Michigan, USA and I don’t want my trip be affected my any sickness or side effects of this vaccine.
Hello! In our direct experience, the yellow fever vaccine was no worse than an influenza vaccine. Meaning, you may have no symptoms, or may experience a little soreness in the arm injection site and some minor fatigue the next day. But nothing that prevented us from doing anything, at least in our case. If you are concerned that the side effects are as bad as the COVID vaccine was (at least for us), I wouldn’t worry about that. The effects from the yellow fever vaccine were nothing that a Tylenol and an extra coffee in the morning couldn’t fix.
I followed this blog yesterday and today to get my own yellow fever vaccine! I was redirected to El Centro de Salud Wanchaq as well, and had to come back the next day at 11am to get the subsidized vaccine. I paid 10 soles for it and the 50 for the international card.
Thanks so much for this information! I wouldn’t have known what to do without it.
Hello!! I really appreciate the information, it was quite helpful 🙂 just wanted to provide an update. As of December 2024 (I went on December 4th), you need to get vaccinated at another health center like the Centro de Salud Wanchaq and then go to the regional hospital to get your international vaccine card. The Centro de Salud Wanchaq starts going adult vaccines at 11am, don’t show up before then. After that you can go to the regional hospital to get the card. It cost me an extra 10 soles at the centro de salud and then 50 soles for the international vaccine card. They have specific days where you can get a vaccine at the Regional Hospital if you’re in a group of 10-12 people, but you need to schedule in advance. I am solo traveling and ended up waiting 3 hours to get vaccinated. Hopefully this will save everyone some time! Otherwise everything on this page was very accurate. Cheers!
Thank you so much for the updated information! We just knew things would change from the post-COVID/political protest times when we were there. We’ll be sure to make some updates to this post soon, alerting readers to your very recent experiences.
12 thoughts on “How to Get a FREE Yellow Fever Vaccine in Cusco, Peru”
Amazing!!
And SO cheap!
This was so helpful! My partner and I did this on June 1, 2023. We went to the Health Center of Clas Wanchaq on a Wednesday after noon (we missed the regional hospital free period in the morning) so the next day we went to the regional hospital on Thursday morning. We paid 100 soles for 2 international passes and then 311 soles for 2 vaccines, around 45 USD.
It took about 1 hour counting a few jogs to the ATM around the corner because we didn’t have enough cash. The nurse was SO helpful and walked us over to the cashier when we didn’t understand we needed to pay more for the commercial shot.
Hope our experience helps you too! Now we’re off to Bolivia!
We’re so glad it worked out well for you. Sounds like you got a much better deal than going to a private clinic! Enjoy Bolivia!
Thanks for the info!! I managed to do this today/ Wednesday/ Dec 13 2023 . They STILL don’t have the Yf vax at Regional Hosp. But they are still the only place with the travel card. So I had to go to Health center Wanchaq to get it then return to Regional for the card. Wanchaq wanted me there at 10. It was 10 soles for the vax at the caja at Wanchaq and 50 soles for the card at Regional. The regional folks at the vax center in the back right are only there 8-12 but they are there every day. So you could get the vax at Wanchaq any day and take your receipts to regionL the next day 8-12
Thanks for the feedback Danielle! Glad to see that the travel card cost hasn’t increased, even if Wanchaq charges a little now. If memory serves, that may be because they are out of subsidized vaccine doses. Even still, you got a really good deal! Happy everything worked out for you.
Thank You for sharing this useful information. I am looking to get this vaccine for the sake of future travel as it’s a lifetime vaccine. Currently I’m in cusco and will go on salkantay trek day after tomorrow. And then to bolivia for 1 week. However I’m not going to amazon and I got my bolivia visa last week in Lima (Indian passport holder living/working in USA). So for my case it’s not mandatory to get this vaccine to enter bolivia.
Only question I have is, are there any side effects after the vaccination? I originally planned to get this vaccine at the end of my trip before returning, as it’s almost cheap here compared to $450-$500 in Michigan, USA and I don’t want my trip be affected my any sickness or side effects of this vaccine.
Hello! In our direct experience, the yellow fever vaccine was no worse than an influenza vaccine. Meaning, you may have no symptoms, or may experience a little soreness in the arm injection site and some minor fatigue the next day. But nothing that prevented us from doing anything, at least in our case. If you are concerned that the side effects are as bad as the COVID vaccine was (at least for us), I wouldn’t worry about that. The effects from the yellow fever vaccine were nothing that a Tylenol and an extra coffee in the morning couldn’t fix.
I followed this blog yesterday and today to get my own yellow fever vaccine! I was redirected to El Centro de Salud Wanchaq as well, and had to come back the next day at 11am to get the subsidized vaccine. I paid 10 soles for it and the 50 for the international card.
Thanks so much for this information! I wouldn’t have known what to do without it.
Well done! So happy that our information was helpful.
And happy travels to you!
Hello!! I really appreciate the information, it was quite helpful 🙂 just wanted to provide an update. As of December 2024 (I went on December 4th), you need to get vaccinated at another health center like the Centro de Salud Wanchaq and then go to the regional hospital to get your international vaccine card. The Centro de Salud Wanchaq starts going adult vaccines at 11am, don’t show up before then. After that you can go to the regional hospital to get the card. It cost me an extra 10 soles at the centro de salud and then 50 soles for the international vaccine card. They have specific days where you can get a vaccine at the Regional Hospital if you’re in a group of 10-12 people, but you need to schedule in advance. I am solo traveling and ended up waiting 3 hours to get vaccinated. Hopefully this will save everyone some time! Otherwise everything on this page was very accurate. Cheers!
Thank you so much for the updated information! We just knew things would change from the post-COVID/political protest times when we were there. We’ll be sure to make some updates to this post soon, alerting readers to your very recent experiences.