I'm definitely a newbie to travel hacking - I can't believe it took me this long to figure out how to make use of airline miles.

At any rate, I'm graduating grad school and want to go to Peru for the month of May. I'm flying from the US East coast, and a rt flight is currently about $600-750. AA, United, continental, LAN, and TACA all make the NYC-Lima route and I've been busily investigating points options for all of these. Looks like about 35k-50k miles would get me a rt.

Currently I have 35k on Delta, and I've just gotten 2 AA citibank cards, but those points won't post soon enough. I've also only seen options for united and continental for 30k bonuses. I guess getting 30k on each airline and booking one way flights would be an option? Their websites are definitely less than clear on this point.

I hope I've posted this in the right place - your forums are fantastic and I'm looking forward to becoming an active member!