Nov 6, 2009 There were a few things Justin’s Grandpa was worried about before we left for our trip. One of them included how well we’d take the altitude at the highest capital city in the world at 3660 meters, La Paz. Since Justin and I had already been through our share of high altitude cities including Potosi, Bolivia (+4000 meters), and places throughout our Uyuni Salt Flat tour such as the site with the geysers at 5100 meters, we thought we’d be fine. Walking to the bus terminal in Arica, Justin and I decided that we’d watch our luggage carefully. The last thing we needed was Justin’s pack to be stolen so we kept a close eye on it. Our bus company insisted that we hand over our luggage to them on the trolley with ... read more

Nov 5, 2009 Today was Kyleigh’s (Justin’s niece’s) first birthday! Uncle Justin was sad not being able to be there for Kyleigh’s special day but hoped her day was fun! We arrived super early in Arica an decided to wait in the bus terminal until it was a reasonable time to go to a hostel to check-in. Hearing that it only rained twice a year in Arica, we were optimistic of having a clear, sunny beach day. But looking at the sky at 7:00AM, it didn’t look very promising. The sky was dark with heavy clouds and actually made Arica look pretty gloomy. Justin and I joked that we brought bad weather to every place we went to. Looking back, it rained on tropical Easter Island, it rained hard when we were at Iguazu Falls, and ... read more

Nov 1, 2009 I expected to wake up late since we didn’t go to sleep around 3:30AM, but when I looked at my watch, it was only 7:00AM. We only slept for 3.5 hours but we both slept well and were wide awake. We were still in awe and partially in denial that my pack got stolen the night before. Since my clothing didn’t take up too much space, I had all of our toiletries and other items we used daily, such as our toothbrush, toothpaste, face soap, lotion, sunscreen, make-up, bug spray, plug adapters, sleeping bag, fleece blanket, and Justin’s shaving stuff (beard growing process commenced once again!). In addition, I lost my bathing suits, micro-cloth towel, brand new hiking shoes (but I got to use them a few times before they were taken!), sandals, ... read more

Oct 29, 2009 We arrived in Sucre around 0730 after our very adventurous first experience in Bolivia. Despite the stress and lack of sleep, we both seemed to be rejuvenated by finally arriving in Sucre. We initially opted to go to a hostel right across the bus stop, but the lack of foreigners, WIFI, and free breakfast influenced us to go to another hostel. We had done some research and found a great hostel, Wasi Masi. Fortunately the hostel we initially went to was nice enough to call us a cab and do the price negotiation for us. Since we arrived in the early morning, we couldn’t check in until afternoon. Rosanne, the innkeeper, was very nice and gave us a free breakfast with tea. As we were waiting around until check-in time, we met lots ... read more

Oct 24, 2009 We realized that Brasilia, Brasil was not a normal tourist destination, especially a backpacker destination, while looking for accommodations and info. We went to all of the normal hostel sites and discovered that no hostels existed. There was a “guest house” that’s prices rivaled those of a midrange hotel. Slightly concerned, we asked our hostel in Rio for assistance. They found one cheap alternative, but the prices were higher than a hostel (we would later find out that it was simply someone’s home that was trying to make extra money - probably illegal because there was no advertisement/sign/signal out front). As we were looking for information on blogs and other sites, we soon realized that everything was extremely expensive and notes on Brasilia consisted of its short history and architectural significance, none on ... read more