...hiked around Machu Picchu? ...crawled around in a mine in Bolivia? ...stood on the largest salt flat in the world? ...sat in the sun on a lovely Peruvian beach? ...stood on the Equator? ...hung out at the Panama Canal? Anne and I were doing a lot of that last week, not just because we were maybe running out of things to talk about after being together 24 hours a day for 31 days in a row, but because we were realizing how many different, incredibly random things we did during our trip. Our last few days were spent in Quito and [View Full Entry]

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Saturday we had a long layover in Panama City, so we set out to explore the city the best we could in such a short amount of time. Since it was pretty expensive traveling to/from the airport in a taxi, we opted to do a city tour with a company that left from the airport. It just made the most sense with the amount of time we had and the amount of money we were willing to spend. Plus it was just super nice to be driven around and not have to make a single decision after 30 days of doing [View Full Entry]

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While bathing was not the theme of our trip, nor even a daily event for Anne and me, it is certainly what what does in Baños, Ecuador. Baños, which literally means baths, is located about 3 hours outside of Quito and we headed there in a bus last Wed. night. As with all night arrivals, we were most focused on getting to a hostel in a non-sketchy taxi when we arrived, so it wasn't until Thursday morning that we could really begin focusing on just enjoying Baños. Aaron said it's his favorite place in Ecuador, so we were eager to see [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Ecuador! Just wanted to quickly write something, as it might be the last chance I get to before we leave Ecuador for home on Saturday. It´s hard to believe that this trip is almost over, yet at the same time, SO much has happened in the past month that it seems like we've been gone more than a month! We were in Cuenca yesterday, a BEAUTIFUL colonial city in the western part of Ecuador. We were quite excited to arrive, given the crazy bus ride that we briefly described yesterday. We enjoyed a full day of awesome food, walking [View Full Entry]

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Hey gang!!! We made it here to Ecuador and right now I'm loving that Ecuador loves Christmas. Decorations and lights are everywhere, a nice change of pace from our last few days in Peru. In Peru's defense, though, it wasn't as close to Christmas a week ago, so perhaps Ecuador's zest for the holiday has more to do with the dates we arrived. But whatever the reason is, it is indeed beginning to look a lot like Christmas here.... :-) So as I mentioned, last week was our main travel week, starting in Bolivia and ending all the way in Ecuador. [View Full Entry]

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Well, we're back in Lima, Peru where we started. Thanks to Jason, we've had a fun day of relaxing in the apartment of PCUSA missionaries Harry and Debbie Horne. It's been so nice to come and chat and relax and eat and do laundry and shower and use free internet....all the things we craved after spending so much time traveling, especially these last few days, as we've traveled a lot of distance, all by bus, and usually at night. Last you knew we were in Sucre, Bolivia, hoping to get out, as we had been told that the highways had "broken." [View Full Entry]

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...you will be eating bread, butter and jam every morning, instant coffee included. But come on....Nescafe...NO ES CAFE. ...you will be spending more than the alotted time in the bathroom because you're folding and hoarding wads of toliet paper. ...the words "WHERE AM I?" fall out of your mouth all too often. ...you'll go on "fluid restriction" hours before boarding a night bus in Bolivia because you know it will be 5 hours before the first potty break, which in reality means everyone milling about zombie-like at 1am in the street (aka a dusty path), looking for the bathroom (aka t [View Full Entry]

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Last fall when I was living in Guadalajara, I had the opportunity to see the most amazing photography exhibit. Titled "Todos los días, la noche" (Every day, the night), the exhibit by Jean-Claude Wicky showed up close and personal the lives of the miners who live in Potosí, Bolivia and spend years of their lives under the ground. I first saw the exhibit on my own and then later on a field trip with my class (Octavio, ¿lo recuerdas?) and each visit I found the photos to be both fascinating and haunting. Those images that I saw a year ago have [View Full Entry]

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Well, we made it to Bolivia! Saturday night neither one of us slept very well because 1) our "mattresses" were cheap foam or something and 2) we were nervous about all the things that could go wrong at our border crossing into Bolivia. In the end, we had nothing to worry about. The guard hardly seemed interested in all the documents that we'd so carefully photocopied and prepared beforehand. He attached our cute little photos to our visa forms and then asked for our Immunization cards. Whoops. Yeah...didn't have those. He needed to see them to be sure that we'd had [View Full Entry]

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OK, I keep starting entries and then not being able to complete them, either cause there´s not enough time, or because I was feeling sick and couldn´t write complete sentences. I am better now, though, and Anne and I are here in Puno, Peru, which sits on beautiful Lake Titicaca. We arrived here yesterday by bus and were planning to head into Bolivia today, but for many reasons, we´re still here. It all comes down to odd bus times and the fact that it´s going to take these little US Citizens a little longer (and a lot more money) to enter [View Full Entry]

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