Ameland, The Netherlands

I can count the number of times I've been away from home since June on the fingers of one hand. You might be thinking: so what? Well, to you this might be normal, but to me it is pretty much the epitome of sucky.

Since we came back from our world trip we've spent 3 days with my Spanish relatives in Cambrils on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. We've also spent 3 days at Jochem's father's holiday home in northern France. And we visited Jochem's mother, who lives in Germany, three times. That's it. Now, call me spoiled (and, for the record, I do know that when it comes to traveling, I am the very definition of spoiled), but visiting one's family abroad does not a trip make. I need a backpack, a flight that's at least 6 hours long and a sifnificant change in weather patterns to fulfill my travel needs. But for the last 8 months there's been none of that.

Of course this all has to do with THE WEDDING. In case you didn't know this yet, weddings are expensive. You should all save yourselves the trouble and just go down to city hall. Perhaps you're wondering why I'm not following my own advice? Well, let me explain. Despite considering myself to be quite the bitter cynic, I actually am one of those women who's always dreamed about their wedding day. I used to read wedding magazines for fun for years (of course now I can't stand them). And although I'm certainly not the kind of bride who worries about things like center pieces and color combinations, there are certain things that I want to have a certain way. Once we decided to have a wedding, we wanted the wedding to feel like ours. We thought it might be nice to enjoy ourselves on our own wedding day. While you can always cut costs and budget money well, certain things were non-negotiable for us, like the date (Saturday), the season (summer) and the food (worthy of only the most critical foodies). And this costs money. Money which I am happy to provide, were it not that with a wedding there is very real deadline that is fastly approaching (less than 5 months as we speak!) and this means that one no longer has the possibility to travel wherever one feels like whenever one wants to.

This has been on my mind lately. I always feel spoiled talking about it but I'm not sure people understand how much I need to travel. That's right - I NEED it.

Anyway, this is why Jochem and I decided to plan a little trip to Ameland. Although not abroad, Ameland is certainly a world away from where we come from. Ameland is one of the 4 Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea at the very northern tip of The Netherlands. I had never been there, even though my grandfather was from Terschelling. We rented a little holiday home at the most western town on the island called Hollum. For 4 days we walked on the beach and rode horses through the countryside. It was nice - quiet, tranquil and dark (no lights other than the lighthouse). I look forward to visiting the other islands some day, but with the rest of the world calling out to me as well, who knows when I'll get to it?

Epilogue

Last July a good friend of mine came to vist me at our new home. She told me how much she had enjoyed our travel stories on my blog while we were away, but that what was missing, was a kind of epilogue, in which I elaborated on life post-world trip. Looks like I'm finally getting to it.

I haven't written anything on here since June. 8 months have passed since we came back from South America via Great Britain. So much has happened since then, yet so little. On the one hand, writing about life back home seemed dull and pointless after having written about Inca trails, Polynesian sculpture and Cambodian contemporary history for 9 months. Mostly, though, I've been busy. Very busy. Extremely busy if you take into account that for the better part of last year I did very little and had close to no responsibilities. Being this busy simply made it impossible for me to sit down long enough to write a blog about what I was doing.

I've basically been working non-stop since we got back. We flew back to The Netherlands on Saturday and I was back at work at my part-time job on Tuesday. In between invigilating English exams, I was applying for teaching jobs in the Utrecht area. Having failed to find 'my passion in life' while backpacking around the world, I decided to put the whole search for my dream job on hold for now and try to get a job as an English teacher, since I have a degree for that and all. For a little while I thought about going back to grad school to pursue another Master's degree (in Translation Theory, no less!), but eventually decided that I didn't feel like saving up for another one of my long-term mega projects. Finally making some money, as opposed to piling on more debt, seemed like the more sensible thing to do.

I thought that, considering the shortage of teachers, my MA in English Linguistics and my teaching degree, it shouldn't be too hard to find a job. But while Jochem was back at his old job after just a week, I was still looking. Despite the shortage of teachers and my credentials, I was only invited to 2 job interviews. One job I lost to a more experienced teacher - the other I was offered on the spot. I took it.

I now teach Business English to first-year Business School students at a university of applied sciences in Utrecht. I love my job. It requires a lot of hard work, but I find that I actually like doing it. So, I am not so much stressed out about my job - I just have very little time left for other things. This is what a typical work day of mine looks like:

I wake up at 5.30 AM. I do yoga, get ready and sit down for breakfast with Jochem at 6.30. I leave the house at 7. I get to work at 8 and check my e-mail before grabbing my material to head for my first class at 8.30. The fall and winter term are the busiest here at school, so in between classes I prepare lessons, grade presentations and correct exercises. I usually don't leave the premises until 6 PM. I get home at 7 PM, have dinner with Jochem and get ready for bed at 8.30. I do some more yoga and am fast asleep by 9.30. The next day I do it all again. In this madness only the precious moments with Jochem and the yoga appear to keep me sane.

It wasn't until the Christmas break that I felt like I could finally slow down. The spring and summer term will be easier, with fewer classes and fewer students. I teach the same course every time, which may seem boring, but I really enjoy being able to keep improving the same lessons over and over again. Since I've spent 6 months preparing these lessons twice already, the rest of the academic year comes down to fine-tuning.

I work part-time, so I have some time for myself to finish up on work and to keep the house. I try to go swimming once a week. I look forward to being able to spend more time just reading, watching TV and listening to podcasts.

Another thing that has added to my overall sense of being busy is my social calendar. To be honest, this was almost as much of a shock to the system as being busy at work. Don't get me wrong - I love being able to see family and friends again on a regular basis, but it sure takes up a lot of my already-very-limited free time. I also had to get re-used to planning my calendar weeks, sometimes months, in advance - understandable, yet strange and surprisingly annoying after doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, for 9 months. I fully participate in this method, yet condemn it at the same time. Sometimes I reminisce about the times where I didn't have to plan at all, other than making sure to be on time for the next plane to the next amazing destination.

I've also had to get used to only seeing Jochem during breakfast and dinner. For 9 months we were joined at the hip - being apart for 12 hours every day has been quite the adjustment.

After we both secured jobs, we quickly found an apartment in Amersfoort because a friend knew a colleague who knew a friend who was moving out. We live in suburbia now, and it's not even the pretty white picket fence kind of suburbia, but the high-rise apartment building kind. Luckily, Amersfoort is much smaller than Utrecht, so it only takes us a few minutes to get to the city center by bike. It has medieval architecture, canals and an amazing dining scene, minus the mega construction projects that Utrecht has been, and will be, enduring. Still, Wittevrouwen beats Liendert in a heart beat. Yet, we're not thinking about moving - I hate moving and we live in a spaceous, light and airy apartment on the top floor with a view over the city. Buying a house is even farther from the brain - mortgages are for grown-up people ready to settle down, not for us. Although we did go to one actual viewing of a house for sale, we quickly decided against it when we realized how much it would affect our ability to spend all of our money on eating out and traveling. Our apartment is close to the bus stop from which a bus takes me straight to work in 30 minutes while I watch the news on my iPhone. Our home is perfect for now.

One final thing that's been on my mind lately is our wedding. Now, I have come to find that planning your actual wedding is a lot less fun than daydreaming about your potential wedding. Since we want a small and simple wedding, there isn't even that much real planning involved. And then I think that maybe I'm forgetting about a bunch of things. And then I think that maybe I just don't have that bridezilla gene in me after all (who knew?!). Either way, most of the planning is done and I'm sure it'll all be just fine. We're getting married at a historic vegetable garden on July 13. By that time, I will have survived my first year at my first real teaching job with 5 weeks of freedom in sight. All my family and friends will be there, surrounded by beautiful vegetarian food, and afterwards we're going on a little culinary adventure in Italy for 2 weeks. To be honest, I might be more excited about the honeymoon than I am about the wedding. We're making a big sacrifice in order to make our wedding happen our way - no travel abroad for a whole year. It's for a good cause, of course. But it also sucks a little bit. It puts one in the awkward position of kind of resenting one's own wedding for being the cause of something that really isn't the wedding's fault - weddings are thought up by 2 incredibly naive people in love and then they take on a life of their own. So call me spoiled, but despite our beautiful wedding plans, I miss the backpackers' lifestyle. Because although many things have changed, one thing hasn't: my unquenchable thirst to travel. As one of my students put it: I have the opposite of being homesick - I am sick for the world.

THE TOP 5

Our world trip is over and I would like to take a moment to recap the last 9 months in this final world trip-related blog. We traveled for exactly 9 months, or 40 weeks, or 280 days.We traveled 84.335 kilometers across 4 continents and 17 countries. We took 7 trains, 14 flights, 15 boats and a staggering 52 busses. We've been to some amazing places and have seen things and done things that some people can only dream of. I never did conquer my fear of flying and free-falling, but I did impress myself by finishing the Inca Trail unscathed. I did not end up hating backpacking, like I had sometimes feared, but thrived and even enjoyed it. I have been bitten by a monkey, bed bugs and countless mosquitos. I have had food poisoning, rabies shots, altitude sickness and teenagers try to mug me, but not once did I get seriously ill, get into an accident or was violently attacked. I did lose 5 kilos and numerous possessions, though, and found out that I too can be disorganized and that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I realize that I don't need a big house, nice car or many things to be happy, and I hope to retain this feeling. Although I am happy to be home and to be back in the Netherlands, another part of me can't wait to hit the road again, this time with an even smaller backpack. Some amazing things have happened. My parents came to visit us in Indonesia and fell in love with its charms as much as I did. Miraculously, Jochem and I managed not to kill each other and are happier together than ever. Jochem asked me to marry him on the beautiful island of Chiloé in Chile and gave me the engagement ring that I had always wanted. We are now quietly planning our next steps and the rest of our lives together. Picking your favorite moments from a lifetime worth of unforgettable moments may seem daunting, but I didn't have to think hard to pick mine, for there are some clear winners. Here are my all-time favorite experiences of our world trip:

5. Roadtripping with old friends in foreign lands, CHILE



4. Exploring the South West Circuit by Jeep, BOLIVIA



3. Navigating the island by scooter, EASTER ISLAND



2. Sailing through Nusa Tenggara, INDONESIA



1. Hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, PERU

From Lima to Almelo via Madrid, London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Utrecht

The last leg of our trip played itself out in Europe. On Monday afternoon, June 4, we hired a cab to drive us through the ugly city of Lima to Jorge Chávez International Airport. At that moment I didn't regret having stayed in Miraflores all that time, because the rest of the city didn't look like it was worth exploring. If I ever see half-finished brown buildings again, it will be too soon!

I was looking forward to the long flight and the many movies that I would be able to watch en route, until I discovered that we were flying with an old airplane and that we didn't have a personal screen. Suddenly flying over the Atlantic Ocean at night for 12 hours without any distraction seemed like a daunting task. Luckily Jochem had booked us a couple of seats with extra leg room, but it was still uncomfortable and we didn't get a lot of sleep.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, June 5 we arrived in sunny Madrid. We had a bite to eat and some much-needed coffee before boarding the 2-hour flight to London, where it was cold, grey and pouring rain. We got on the subway and made our way to our cosy hotel near King's Cross. Experiencing Europe's efficiency and cleanliness was a bliss after so many months of backpacking! We went to Charlotte Street where we had dim sum for dinner.





The next morning we got on the nicest train in the world, which took us to Birmingham, where Aimee picked us up. We met Aimee and her husband Matt in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia and immediately bonded over travel, South East Asia, food and vegetarianism. They're wonderful people and it was nice to see them again and exhange stories. While Matt was at work, Aimee showed us downtown Birmingham. We did some shopping, had lunch and ate cake. For dinner they took us to one of Birmingham's famous vegetarian Indian restaurants where I had the most amazing thali and mango lassi. Thank you, Matt and Aimee, for a great day!



The next day we took another train to our beloved Edinburgh. We visited Edinburgh for the first time last year, when I took Jochem there for his 25th birthday, and immediately fell in love with it. Of course, then, we were blessed with four warm and sunny days. This time, however, we were not so lucky. Still, I love this city more than ever and, just like last time, I would love to live there. If Edinburgh was a city in the Netherlands, I would move there instantly. I hope that one day we will be able to move there - not indefinitely, but maybe for a year or so. I said the same thing when we visited last year, but it's so easy to forget once you're back home. Possibilities become huge obstacles once you start to think about the practicalities of moving abroad (or at least to me), but I hope that we can make it happen someday.

Edinburgh is such a great city because it has it all: history, greenery, culture, restaurants and night life, while it seems like a small and easily managed place that cannot be compared to other capitals that I often find pompous, overwhelming and simply too big. But my favorite thing about Edinburgh is that the locals know their priorities, namely eating out and drinking. We had but a mere day in town so we had to squeeze in as much as possible.

First point on the agenda was to pick up Mariëlle from her hotel. She wasn't able to visit us in Chile so we were thrilled that we could show her around Edinburgh. We took her to Arthur's Seat for a hike up the volcanic mountain, possibly my favorite place in town. Next stop was tea and cake for lunch. We spent the next few hours wandering the many beautiful streets of downtown Edinburgh and making a few stops here and there - nothing too demanding. We ended our evening with dinner at David Bann, Edinburgh's best vegetarian restaurant.









And then, suddenly very quickly, the moment had arrived to go home. The three of us got on a plane and in a short hour the all-too-familiar sight of the Dutch countryside came into view. A whole delegation of family and friends was at Schiphol to welcome us home. Unfortunately, the weather in the Netherlands wasn't very nice either, but that didn't stop us from traveling to Utrecht for a well-deserved bag of fries with Dutch mayonnaise and fresh 'stroopwafels'. Back in Almelo more family and friends arrived to welcome us back home.





And now we're home. We're official residents of Almelo and are living at my parents' house. Our pets appear to recognize us and will surely forgive us any day now for forsaking them for 9 months. We unpacked our backpacks and after overcoming the initial shock of the unreasonable amount of clothes in our closet, we gave about a third of it away to charity. I have started my parttime job invigilating and supervising exams and am applying for teaching jobs in the 'Randstad', while Jochem got his old job back in exactly 3 days and got back to work this morning. We're looking at apartments in Amersfoort and have made an appointment for our very first location sighting in preparation for our wedding, although I get more excited thinking about possible honeymoon destinations than looking at wedding dresses. I've been so busy working, running errands and meeting up with family and friends that I haven't really had time to relax and let this new reality sink in. I suppose I'll get to it, eventually.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Home by Michael Bublé

Another summer day
Has come and gone away
In Paris and Rome
But I wanna go home
Mmmmm


Thailand

May be surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel all alone
Just wanna go home
Oh, I miss you, you know


Laos

I've been keeping all the letters that I wrote to you
Each one a line or two
''I'm fine, baby, how are you?''
I would send them but I know that it's just not enough
My words were cold and flat
And you deserve more than that


Cambodia


Malaysia


Singapore


Indonesia

Another airplane
Another sunny place
I'm lucky, I know
But I wanna go home
I've got to go home


Australia

Let me go home
I'm just too far
From where you are
I wanna come home


New Zealand

And I feel just like I'm living someone else's life
It's like I just stepped outside
When everything was going right
And I know just why you could not come along with me
This was not your dream
But you always believed in me


Easter Island


Chile


Argentina


Uruguay

Another winter day
Has come and gone away
In even Paris and Rome
And I wanna go home
Let me go home


Paraguay

And I'm surrounded by
A million people I
Still feel alone
Let me go home
Oh, I miss you, you know


Brazil

Let me go home
I've had my run
Baby, I'm done
I've gotta go home


Bolivia

Let me go home
It'll all be alright
I'll be home tonight
I'm coming back home


Peru

MY FAVORITE SOUTH AMERICA

ACCOMMODATION our Torre del Mar suite at Las Olas, Copacabana, Lake Titicaca, Bolivia

ALCOHOLIC DRINK homemade pisco sours with local trees, plants, herbs and fruits at Ayllu, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, but I also have a soft spot for sauvignon blanc from Chile and Brazil's caipirinhas

BAR La Piojera, home to Santiago's famous terramote, Chile

BEACH Punta Norte at Peninsula Valdés, Argentina for wildlife (orcas!), but Bahía Inglesa, Chile for playing in the surf with friends

CITY Valparaíso, Chile

CLUB 9 months of traveling together has confirmed it: we are NOT clubbers!

COUNTRY Bolivia

DISAPPOINTMENT Buenos Aires, Argentina

DRINK tereré, Paraguay

FELLOW TRAVELLERS on the Inca Trail, Peru

FOOD Being a vegetarian in South America is tricky and in many places food just wasn't a highlight at all. My favorite food was probably the perfectly crafted corn bread called chipa from Paraguay.

LOCALS Isla Grande de Chiloé, Chile

MELTDOWN Almost getting robbed by a bunch of kids in Montevideo, Uruguay, though I must say that I'm quite proud of leaving South America without having been in a serious bus accident, without having been mugged, and with my ear lobes intact.

MONUMENT Machu Picchu, Peru

MUSEUM the archeological museum at Tiwanaku, Bolivia

NATURE South West Circuit, Bolivia

RANDOMNESS There is so much to see in South America that it becomes quite overwhelming - it took us 40 days to figure out that maybe we should move on and finally leave Chile, and still we feel like we've only seen a small piece of the country.

RESTAURANT Pizza Andina, Puno, Peru

SURPRISE La Paz, Bolivia

WEATHER always sunny Paraguay

I wouldn't have wanted to miss...
...the challenging but ultimately rewarding hike on the Inca Trail.

I could've skipped...
...Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I want to go back to...
...Argentina, to see more of Argentinian Patagonia.

[inspired by The Other Flying Dutchman]

Lima, Peru

Well. There have been times when I didn´t feel like writing, but this is the first time in 9 months that I honestly don´t know what to write. We've been in Lima for 10 days but I can't say that we've been through any kind of tourist experience while here. Of course this was kind of the point and I try not to feel too guilty about being so lazy by remembering what Derek once told me about his last 2 weeks in New Zealand during a 6-month trip - that he, too, didn´t feel like doing anything.

We rented an apartment in the neighborhood called Miraflores. Miraflores is a suburb in the huge 7+-million metropolis of Lima, but a really cool suburb. It´s near the beach and houses all the hip restaurants, cafés and clubs. There are countless little shops and everything is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are always people on the street and I felt very safe, even at night.

Our apartment was picked by yours truly on the basis of two essentials: for one, it had an open kitchen with a round table next to the bar, and two, it was painted in bright orange. Turns out that we were staying in just the perfect little place for two world trip survivors. We had a doorman, an elevator, 2 bathrooms, 1 bathtub, a walk-in closet, a flatscreen TV with cable, and a kitchen with everything that we wanted and needed. Across from our apartment complex there was a massive organic supermarktet, open 24/7.

To say that we spent most of our time in this small apartment either cooking, eating, checking Facebook, watching TV or sleeping would be an understatement. We spent almost our entire budget on food. Sometimes we would go out to have lunch at extravagant and pioneering vegetarian restaurants, or to watch a movie at the mall, or to go shopping. One time we even had people over for drinks - a lovely British couple whom we'd met on the Inca Trail.

Before we came to Lima I had underlined a bunch of things in our Lonely Planet - stuff for us to do during this 10-day spell: museums, plazas, monasteries, neighborhoods. But nothing came of it. Our days in grey Lima flew by in a blurry haze. Only once did we go out of our way to see a sight: the adobe pyramid called Huaca Pucllana, in Miraflores, within walking distance of our apartment. But it was closed, so we only caught a glimpse. We never went back to see it properly.

I'm so ready to go home.













If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!

Peru's South Coast

After we successfully hiked the Inca Trail and with one week left before we could move into our apartment in Lima, we decided to use the time to explore the southern coast of Peru. I have mixed feelings about this part of the country. Arguably, some of the countries most famous sights are located on this small stretch of coast and the weather is generally warm and sunny. However, this area was hit hard by the 2007 earthquake and this can still be seen today - it can be quite a depressing place, so we kept moving to keep ourselves busy and preoccupied. Off we went then on our very last night bus from Cuzco and we arrived in Nazca on Sunday morning.

Nazca is very hot and kind of a sleepy place. I didn't like the city very much but, of course, we weren't there to see the city but to see the famous Nazca lines. We arrived at Nazca's airport on Monday morning and, while we had to wait to board our plane, a very interesting National Geographic documentary was shown about the Nazca people. They made the thousands of lines by removing dark rocks in such a way that it showed the lighter color of sand underneath. Why the Nazca people did this is unknown, but researchers think that it might have something to do with ancient rituals, human sacrifices and the constant search for water in the desert. Peru's southern coast is not a very pretty coast - like in northern Chile, there are no palm trees, just scorching desert. One can imagine that it must have been tough to survive in this harsh environment.

I didn't get to see the end of the documentary because it was time to depart. I was a little bit nervous because I was about to board the smallest plane that I had ever been on and it looked suspiciously like a coffin with wings. You may not know this about me, what with all of my traveling, but I'm a little bit afraid of flying (''rooted in deep-seated fears of control,'' if I am to believe the people on the TV show Criminal Minds), and I am one of those annoying people who will ask what this or that sound means. The bigger the plane, the better, is what I'm thinking, because the bigger the plane, the less turbulence I generally feel. So you can understand my hesitation. Turns out that it wasn't scary at all. Considering how clear the Nazca lines are from the plane, it's incredibly tricky to get a good photo, but our picture of the hummingbird is a good example of what you can see from the air.


Nazca


Nazca


a hummingbird at the Nazca lines

On Monday afternoon we took a local bus to Ica, just 2 hours from Nazca, and then a short taxi ride to Huacachina. Only a few hundred people live in Huacachina and it's obvious why - besides a small lagoon and monstrous sand dunes, there is absolutely nothing in this tiny place. We hadn't planned to visit Huacachina but after a fellow traveler showed us a picture of the sand dunes we changed our minds. Huacachina was originally built as a resort for the Peruvian elite and now it is backpackers' central, and not in a good way. To be honest, the weather is very nice in Huacachina and the setting is gorgeous, but most people here waste their days drinking and listening to very bad music. Most people we met stayed for at least a week, something that sounds like hell to me, but to each his own.

We only stayed for 2 nights to go on a dune buggy ride. This dune buggy ride was so much fun! Around 4 PM the locals pick up the backpackers in these insane monster truck concoctions that only seem to have a steering wheel, a gas pedal and a break and they proceed to drive extremely fast over the huge sand dunes. It's like being in a rollercoaster - you're strapped in and the driver speeds like a maniac up these vertical walls of sand and then turns, drives over another sand dune, and suddenly there is no more ground and you fall down another vertical wall of sand. It was kind of scary at times and I'm sure we violated at least a dozen safety laws but BOY, that was fun! I kept thinking about my little brother, who would have loved this. Jochem also tried some sandboarding and I enjoyed the majesty of nature during sunset. Most of our time in Huacachina, though, was not spent on the sand dunes but at Casa de Bamboo, a quaint little family-run restaurant with good coffee, fresh food and kittens, away from our fellow backpackers.


Huacachina


Huacachina


Huacachina


Huacachina


Casa de Bamboo in Huacachina


Casa de Bamboo in Huacachina

On Wednesday afternoon we took another local bus to Pisco, just an hour from Ica, to visit the famous Islas Ballestas. I had wanted to come to Pisco, as opposed to planning a tour from Huacachina, because the Lonely Planet mentions that Pisco was hit the hardest during the 2007 earthquake and I wanted to support the local community instead of some random tour agency an hour away. But as soon as we arrived in Pisco I kind of wished that we had stayed in Huacachina instead, because Pisco is one the most depressing places that I have ever been.

First of all, the sun was suddenly nowhere to be found and we were surrounded by a Dutch grey sky for 2 days. After 5 years the town is still in ruins, which is just unbelievable to me. The people seem hard and we read that, due to poverty, Pisco is quite dangerous so we never went out after dark. But, despite our hosts' efforts, out hotel wasn't exactly a treat to stay at either, because things kept breaking down. Even the street dogs look worse in Pisco - nothing but miserable skin and bones aimlessly wandering the streets. When we booked a tour to the Islas Ballestas it was one of the worst tours that I have ever been on. We weren't treated with a lot of respect, which I did expect since tourism is pretty much the only thing holding Pisco together. There wasn't any communication between the tour guides and the tourists and at one point the captain started to chase these poor birds so that we could get a good picture, while it is my humble opinion that wild life should be left alone. In Paracas the local people even fed wild pelicans and then demanded money if tourists took pictures. The locals are just so desperate for money that they do anything to make a buck, thereby inadvertently destroying the wildlife that people come to Pisco to see. It makes me very sad.

Overall, the poverty in South America is starting to wear me down. I'm not sure if maybe I'm just tired of traveling in general, but I tend to think that it's South America because I've been to some pretty poor places in South East Asia, including a couple of destitute rural villages in Cambodia, and it's just so different there. Despite their circumstances people appear to have a much more positive view on life while in Pisco people resent the hand that they've been given. But who could blame them? How would you feel if 5 years after the date you are still living in the rumble of an earthquake? What would you do? I kept thinking about Kim Cattrall's line in SATC 2: ''I need to go somewhere RICH!'' I, too, want to go 'somewhere rich,' somewhere where I am not constantly reminded of poverty and street dogs and begging children and where I feel safe to walk the streets at night.

Anyway, the Islas Ballestas are sometimes called the Poor Man's Galapagos and although I, sadly, have never been to Ecuador's Galapagos Islands, I wouldn't go that far. It reminded me more of a skimpy version of the kind of wildlife that we saw in the Beagle Channel when we took a boat trip from Ushuaia in Argentina. But, still, I would say that the trip was a success because it was nice to get out of Pisco, out on the water and into the sun and it was the first time that I saw pelicans, which was pretty cool. After some searching we also found a woman selling chocotejas, which is a great treat of nuts covered in dulce de leche covered in chocolate and, yes, that is exactly as good as it sounds.


Islas Ballestas


Islas Ballestas


Candelabra at the Islas Ballestas


chocotejas, a specialty from Ica

On Friday morning, then, our quick tour of Peru's southern coast was over and we boarded a 3-hour bus to Lima, which is our final stop in South America. We rented an apartment. We have never done this before, but people we met in Bolivia did it in Buenos Aires and said that it was great. We wanted to try it because we're extremely tired from traveling and want a place of our own. Ever since I hiked the Inca Trail I've been walking around with this sense of 'mission accomplished' and I'm so ready to go home. Fellow travelers told me that this would happen and now I believe them because I really want to go home. Because of that, things that used to be normal, things like fellow backpackers, dorm rooms, shared communal spaces, long bus rides and cheap food, become unbearable inconveniences, so spending 10 days in our own apartment sounds like a treat. The apartment was a bit too pricey for our budget, but after having stayed there for a few days already, I can say with 100% certainty: money well spent.

If you'd like to see more pictures of our world trip, check out our picture gallery here!