The Blog

  • January 2025 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Perú
    We spent the whole month of January in Miraflores, Lima house sitting for two adorable doggos! It was good to be off the road for a while. We were able to take care of things best done in a big city. Staying in one place we were able to develop a daily and weekly routine….
  • Three Colombian Small Towns – Guatapé, Jardín & Salento
    July 12 & August 13 – 18, 2024. When we finally left Medellín, we had just over two weeks before our three months in Colombia would come to an end. We wanted to see a little more of the country as we traveled to the Ecuadorian border by bus. We picked 5 small towns and…
  • December 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Perú
    We traveled over 1100 miles in December. We visited natural wonders and ancient ruins in the Northern Highlands of Perú around Chachapoyas and Nuevo Tingo. We crossed the Andes Mountains on an often one-lane road with steep drop-offs in a tiny Combi. We hung out in Cajamarca, where we learned more about Perú’s ancient cultures…
  • November 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Ecuador & Perú
    The first full five days of November were spent at our house sit in Cuenca, Ecuador. It was a bit of a hectic last week as we got ready to hit the road again and spent time enjoying the Fiestas de Cuenca, Cuenca’s Independence festival. We were surprised to learn that unlike the US which…
  • October 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Ecuador
    We began October in the lovely Mindo, exploring the cloud forest, birding, and searching for waterfalls. But we were soon headed south. We had a house sit to get to by October 15 in Cuenca. We took a bus from Mindo back to Quito where we stayed overnight near the bus station. The next day…
  • La Feria de las Flores de Medellín 2024
    August 3 – 11, 2024. We love a good festival! And lucky us, we were in Medellín for one of Colombia’s biggest festivals, La Feria de las Flores. The first Feria de las Flores was held in 1957 to celebrate the flower-growing industry of the Santa Elena district, just north of Medellín. Back then it…
  • September 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Ecuador
      September was a weird month for us. We spent most of it in Quito, Ecuador, where we intended to take Spanish classes. But then we decided to teach ourselves instead of going to school. We bought various online programs to practice grammar, listening, and speaking and set up a daily “school” schedule. We found…
  • Medellín
    June 8 – August 13, 2024 To get from the Medellín airport to the city you travel 15 miles, 5 of which go through the second-longest tunnel in Latin America, the Túnel de Oriente. In the tunnel, there are signs imploring people to not slow down. The tunnel seemed to go on forever as we…
  • August 2024 Expenses & Backpack Travel in Colombia
    We moved around a lot in August. We started out in Envigado in the southern part of Medellín but moved to the Manila neighborhood adjacent to the trendy and hip Poblado neighborhood when our friend Wayne came to visit us for 4 nights. We finished up school and spent our last weekend in Medellín enjoying…
  • Pride and Pickpocketing
    The Metro was packed. It was Sunday afternoon, and we were heading to our first cultural event with our Spanish School in Medellín. At our stop, the majority of the passengers poured out. We stayed with the flow, funneling one by one through the turnstile, and started down the wide stairs of the station leading…