Pack your essentials

Arequipa is a truly delightful surprise. Where Lima had been a bustling big city with many of the same pains and delights as any other, Arequipa was quaint, colonial, beautiful and clean. We arrived after dark and took another slightly terrifying cab ride from the minuscule airport (picture an average sized Walmart with an average size parking lot in front. Arequipa airport and its parking lot out front are smaller than that). In the dark, it was hard to tell what we had arrived to as we wound around hilly dirt roads through sparse housing, and we wondered if this was the South American equivalent of a small Swiss mountain village. We eventually turned onto a decently sized highway (wondering why we hadn't taken something like this to begin with) and once we starting bobbing along over cobblestones, we knew we had reached downtown Arequipa. It was too late to start exploring, but we did need some dinner and the friendly hostel staff had sent us direction main square. Much to ...

Arriving in Lima felt a lot like we really had embarked on a dramatic adventure. From the airplane window, we saw nothing but brown hills and brown cliffs plunging into the ocean, and what looked like a sea of brown huts sprawling in the distance. The taxi ride to the hostel made us feel no less uneasy, as we were plunged right into Lima rush hour traffic. Cars of all shapes and sizes, mostly at least 15 years old, none of them without significant scratches, dings and dents, were all honking like their lives depended on it. Lanes didn't seem to matter, nor did stop signs or pedestrian crossings. In fact, red lights seemed to be really the only thing to stop the masses of cars elbowing each other out of the way like skiers at trying to get to the lift first. Once we got to our hostel and started getting our bearings, we started to realize that aside from insane driving, Lima really isn't so different from any big city. It was by the time we had dinner at "Popular...

Photo credit: Michael D'Angelo There are only a few times in life when going on a giant trip is possible. In our opinion, moving between continents is one such time. Instead of flying straight from San Francisco to London, why not make life a bit more interesting and add a month of backpacking in South America in between? This is exactly what we decided to do, and though it exponentially increased the amount of work we had to do in preparation of our move, we're excited to be embarking on this trip and sharing our adventures on this blog! This is our approximate itinerary. Stay tuned for updates!

When we decided it was time to leave the US and move to England, it sparked a flurry of "but we haven't done ___ yet!". There was no way we'd manage to do everything on our very long bucket list, but if there was one thing we couldn't miss before leaving, it was America's number one sight: The Grand Canyon.   In a rash but rationalized decision we decided the best time to do this would be two weekends before our departure. Thankfully, it was reasonably well planned and we had flights, hotels and a rental car booked weeks in advance. This may sound not worth writing home about, but for us, this is an accomplishment. A delayed flight got us in to Phoenix very late on Friday night, causing us to get to a very late start on Saturday. After a hearty breakfast and picking up picnic supplies we finally hit the road for the four hour drive by 1pm. We picked the scenic route via Prescott and Tonto National Forests and enjoyed a long but beautiful drive throug...