Welcome to Bolivia. Enjoy our Awesome.

Pictures are updated for your perusing pleasure.

Entering Bolivia from Argentina was a bit of a shock. Bolivia is a bit rougher around the edges: the roads are bad, the people work hard for just a few dollars a day, trash piles up on the side of the highway... not to mention gourmet ice cream shops and steakhouses are completely MIA.

But we've been amazed by the friendliness of the people and the unbelievably beautiful scenery. Our introduction to Bolivia was Tupiza - a desert town with beautiful red canyons and cacti dotting the landscape. But when we're talking of beautiful scenery, we have to focus on our 4-day tour of the Bolivian Altiplano and the Salt Flats.

This tour is a popular one and with good reason. The Altiplano ("high plains") comprises the Southwest region of Bolivia all the way up to the Capitol at La Paz. The area actually is home to the majority of Bolivia's population, but it's also barren in places and it's home to snow-capped mountains, smoking volcanic geysers, pre-Incan ruins, and beautiful flamingo-inhabited lagoons.

Sound cool yet? It gets better. The spectacular culmination is the "Salar de Uyuni," aka "The Salt Flats." The Salt Flat is actually a gigantic salt lake, but it doesn't look like a lake. There's a massive deposit of salt at the surface that's 2 feet thick. It's also perfectly flat. This creates 2 different effects: in the dry season, the lake is parched and you can see nothing but blindingly white salt. But now it's rainy season, and the rains have left a 2-inch layer of perfectly flat, still water on the surface of the salt. The result is a mirror effect, the sky reflects perfectly on the surface. Combined with the fact that you can see forever out into the horizon, you lose your orientation. You can't tell up from down, and it looks like you're literally walking on clouds. Stunning.

Words do no justice but we'll do our best:

Day 1
Bags thrown on the roof and us piled into the Lexus 4x4, a Swedish couple, our guide/driver Dieter and our cook Aidey. Crawled slowly out of Tupiza's desert on dirt roads, eventually reaching a flat grassy plain at 11,800 feet where llamas and donkeys graze. Several great lookout points with great views, including one with ridiculous wind. Stopped in a small village to take pictures, fascinating but don't like treating the locals like they're in a zoo. Settled for the night in a tiny village at 13,500 feet after 8 hours in the 4x4 sightseeing.

Day 2
Ridiculously early 4:30am wakeup call, lots of ground to cover. Bread and dulce de leche for breakfast reminds us of Argentina, but when we hit the pre-Incan ruins at sunrise you're instantly back in Bolivia. We get along really well with Joel and Ami our Swedish company, and we all enjoy the lookout point over the lagoon at almost 16,000 feet, not the highest we'll be. After 7 hours on dirt "roads" in the 4x4 we soak in the excessively anticipated hot springs and it's totally revitalizing. After lunch the highlight of the day hits us at 16,404 feet above sea level: a group of smoking volcanic geysers shooting steam straight out of the ground and causing the mud to boil... well worth tolerating our driver's latin club music for 10 hours. Tomorrow is for Ipods. Sleeping at 14,000 feet causes head and muscle aches for some.

Day 3
Another early wakeup call at 6:30 and we're tired from sitting in the 4x4 for 2 full days and have another long one. Flamingos at 14,000 feet in front of a snow-capped mountain is a new one for us. Rich survives a jump off a boulder in the Valley of Rocks. Kendra enjoys the sweet potatoes for lunch that are still good even in the rain. Lots of driving, snow-capped mountains in all directions. Beautiful. We settle in the tourist-trap known as Uyuni, settling for cold showers but they're oh-so-needed.

Day 4
The culmination and the highlight: The Salt Flat. Unbelievable. Incredible. Indescribable. It looks and feels like you're walking on the sky if it weren't for the salt crunching under for your feet. There is no horizon, it just disappears into the sky. The pictures are amazing. We spend well over an hour enjoying the surreal, unearthly place that's like no other we'll ever see. We come back to Uyuni and have some cold beverages with our now good friends the Swedes. We hit our pillows amazed, and exhausted.

Seriously, we have to come home in 2.5 months?!

Northwest Argentina: Wine and The Desert

Although it took much effort, we were finally able to drag ourselves away from the bustle of Buenios Aires and headed toward the northwest corner of Argentina, bordering Chile and Bolivia. Our time in Argentina was coming to an end, and although there is so much more to this country that we have to leave for next time, we have enjoyed what areas we were able to see and felt that some time in Argentina's wine country was a good way to say good-bye.

First, we stopped over in Salta, a nice medium sized city, to rest from our long bus ride. We then headed a few hours south to Cafayate. The area around Mendoza in Argentina is known for its red wine made from Malbec grapes, which we have sampled in restaurants throughout Argentina. However, Cafayate is known for its white Torrontes, although there are also a few red wines floating around as well. The torronte grape grows particularly well in the Cafayate valley. The small town itself is surrounded by miles of vineyards and miles of desert. We spent two days walking and biking to the various vineyards for tastings and then one day touring the surrounding desert.

After we felt well informed enough to settle on our favorite white and red wines to purchase, we hit the road again heading back north to Jujuy, another medium sized city. North of Jujuy are some beautiful desert areas and we spent one night Purmamarca. Although tourists may flock to this town, they are completely justified by the colors of the surrounding landscape. Most famous is a large hill overshadowing the town that´s known for having 7 different colors of rocks in various layered formations -- hence the name ¨7 Colors Hill¨. Although this hill was very beautiful, we were particularly struck by the hills we saw on an afternoon walk as these same 7 colors were repeated in more isolated forms. There would be one hill that was bright orange, while the hill next to it was purple (yes, it was actually purple even if the camera did not quite pick it up).

Some of our pictures have been updated from the past few days, while others we have not had the chance to upload. Additionally, more desert pictures are on the way as we are preparing for a 4 day tour of the Salt Flats in Bolivia. (And yes, for those who know Kendra well and have ever had the unfortunate experience of talking about the desert with her, she is in heaven here).

Buenos Aires

Having lived in a metropolis like Chicago, we love our big cities. We love the subway and the crowds, even the weird smells and crazy characters. We've had some cities we've really loved during our last 10 months travelling - Medellin, Cartagena, Cuenca - but until now we have yet to run into a truly exceptional, real metropolis.

Buenos Aires is everything a big city should be. It's diverse, beautiful, sprawled, and full of life and culture. There's a busy downtown business center and some really cool neighborhoods filled with character. It has a strong European influence and has great cafes, bakeries, restaurants, bars, and clubs. It's really, at the end of the day, a lot like Chicago and it's been great to pass the time in a place that feels both foreign and familiar.

In addition to it's familiarities Buenos Aires has unique characteristics as well. It's one of the world's Tango capitals and there are both those who dance on the street on a 5x5' platform and pose for pictures with tourists and there are the "real" tango clubs called "Milongas," where there's no sign outside, the real dancers show up, and the party gets started late.

The food is incredible, particularly the traditional Argentine Parrilla, the bakeries serving amazing sweets, the artisan ice cream, and the variety of international foods on offer. We are possibly leaving several pounds heavier than when we arrived but full of steak, sausage, and ice cream so you won't hear any complaints.

More than anything, there's just a great big city vibe here: wide avenues, big parks, great museums, and that big-city feel that we haven't found since Mexico City.

Here are some of our BA highlights:

- Staying in the character-rich neighborhood of San Telmo and the Sunday arts fair here
- Watching the outdoor Milonga for tango in the plaza
- Sipping on coffees in cafes, artisan ice cream in the park, and the best steak of our lives at a hole-in-the-wall local favorite
- Hanging out late with our local musician friend, Diego (who we met on our Panama-Colombia boat trip)
- Watching the horse races in San Isidro and losing our US$2.50 because "Stray Cat Blues" is slow as hell
- Wandering off the tourist trap blvd in historic La Boca to see the colorful neighborhood and avoid being asked to eat something, drink something, or take a picture of a "tango" dancer

Northward we go. Another 20+ hour bus trip. Sounds fun eh?

Life on the Road Part 2: The Budget

Bunches of new pictures up, and here's a nice looooong post especially for the Math Nerds in our families.

While on our journey we have met a lot of new people who inevitably realize that we are traveling for an extended period of time, and in turn we have encountered a good mix of reactions. Some people recall the time they went on a year long trip; others will joke about how jealous they are. However, one reaction which we have experienced regularly is “You must be rich!” or the even better cousin reaction of “ Your parents must be rich!” We count ourselves very fortunate to be able to able to travel this way; however, we have never really considered ourselves, or our families, RICH. We thought this would be a good time to lift the veil as to how we are still out here after 10 months and, as our parents can testify, have not visited Western Union once.

Before anything else is said, this trip has forced us to acknowledge how lucky we really are. Seeing the poverty of some of these countries has put our lives into perspective. We are rich, not only with our bank accounts, but the fact that we were able to attend higher education and have had good employment history. That said, you don't need to be Donald Trump or anywhere close to travel long term. The biggest factor in traveling long-term is to recognize that it's not a vacation. We had to adjust our expectations from what most Americans consider vacation to be. We're not here splurging on all-inclusive packages or drinking expensive poolside cocktails (though we have our moments), we're here to live a traveling lifestyle that affords us a great deal of freedom, but one that is not unlimited, and that is very different than a typical week at Disney World.

Pre-trip Planning and Saving

Our financial planning for this trip began years ago when we came up with our first budget. Choosing the destination was the first major step. There are travel sites on the web that give good price estimates for visiting various countries. For example, you might see a range for Guatemala of $20-40 per day. Your actual expenses will depend on whether you stay at the cheapest place in town, cook every meal for yourself, and never do organized activities; or if you stay at a slightly nicer place, go out to eat occasionally, and take a few tours. We quickly realized that we would not been able to afford certain regions or countries this time around. You can get a night's accommodation in Nicaragua for the cost of one beer in England. We had to put many of our travel fantasizes on hold...bye bye Italy. We then took the estimates for parts of Central and South America, factored in our tastes/desires, and multiplied by the number of days that we wanted to travel for, and we had our first budget. However, we soon realized that we needed money to buy gear for the trip, for flights, for travel health insurance, for replacement gear, for gifts, for unforeseen expenditures (and how there has been a lot of those), and to come back and live on for a while. All said and done our budged tripled.

It took us a few years and a lot of hard work to be able to save up enough for us to feel comfortable. To meet our goals we not only had to change our perception of “vacation,” but we also changed our lifestyle at home as well. We chose to do without many of the things our friends and coworkers were doing. We cooked cheaply at home for most meals, brought our lunch to work, we became frequenters of thrift stores, we didn't buy a new car, and most importantly we decided not to buy property and instead rented an inexpensive apartment way below our income level. We did make a commitment to enjoy our time in Chicago and went out with friends or occasionally for dinner and a movie. This may have possibly delayed our departure a few months but it was completely worth it.

Keeping Track of It All

As soon as we started actively saving for our trip, we decided to keep matriculate details of our expenditures. Once we left, we continued with this habit. This has turned out to be one of the most valuable tools to keep us on track financially. Before we left we had a target Cost-Per-Day average that we hoped to reach by the end of the trip. We also had a range for that target number that we felt comfortable with, including an idea of what we could possibly do if we came back with a bare bones return fund.

While traveling we keep track of every credit card charge or ATM withdrawal and add it into our spreadsheets. We calculate how much we are spending per day for each month as well as our overall trip daily average. Now that we are far into our trip we've been calculating more detailed target averages for different return scenarios. Sounds exciting eh? We told you not everything we do out here is for fun.

When you are planning to spend $X per day over the course of the entire trip, you learn that this is a large average. One day you will be way over and the next way under. Forget about days, some months we are way over and some months we are under. We have also learned that large excursions only add pocket change to our daily average over the long haul, and that small expenditures can really add up! A fact that's become very important to our daily lives on the road.

When to Spend and When to Save

If you are taking a 2 week vacation, you want to enjoy yourself with as much as possible. Go to a nice resort, eat out, stay at nice hotels. However, when you are traveling long term on a tighter budget, the number one factor that can make or break your budget is the type of lifestyle you lead. We won't lie, it has been hard trying to figure our what works for us. When we started out on this trip we watched every single dollar. We tried to stay in the cheapest places, cook cheap meals, and walk everywhere. We have come to learn enough to be a bit more flexible and have personally found that we don't really want to do things as cheap as possible. We will pay an extra dollar to stay at a slightly better hostel or we will pay a few bucks to take a cab from the bus station if it is a mile walk. At the same time, we still have managed to live very cheaply by making smart sacrifices that fit what our travel goals are. Here are the details of many of the things that we do to keep the costs down, keep us out on the road longer, and make the trip a Permacation instead of a Vacation.

1. Cooking. Depending on the country we are in and what is available, we have consistently only spent between $1-$3 per person per meal on the entire trip by cooking our own meals instead of eating out at restaurants. In some countries we have found this to be more helpful than others. In Guatemala you can get a good dinner for only $4, while in Argentina you will be paying $12. Thus, in some countries we have gone out to eat more than others. We also take advantage of cheap deals when we can, like splitting obscenely cheap, very hearty set lunches offered in many Latin American countries.

2. Housing. Hostels have cost us between $4 and $20 per person per night depending on the quality and location. As mentioned before, we tend not to stay in the cheapest place, but we are still very conscious of the choices we make. In some areas we can share a private room for the same cost of two dorm room beds; however, in other countries, a private room might cost us both double that of a dorm room. Even in those cases; however, we will usually pay the extra $1 per night to stay in a dorm room with 4 beds instead of one with 10 beds.

3. Tours/Activities. One of the largest considerations for doing activities while on a trip of this length is what areas you will be traveling in the future. We purposefully put off white water rafting until we got to Honduras where it is known to be cheaper. We absolutely loved it and want to go again, but we are bypassing the activity in Argentina and waiting again until Peru when it will be a fraction of the cost. We have also chosen to go without some activities that were simply out of our price range (who really NEEDS to go skydiving). Most importantly, we have taken the time to research the cost of the activities we have chosen to do. Sometimes you can get a discount going with your hostel group, other times the price is almost double just to have them drive you there and buy your entrance ticket. Sometimes we get guides, sometimes we go it on our own. Regardless, we try to eventually experience all the activities we have been looking forward to, we just have to wait until the right time, place, and method.

4. Transport. This one is tricky because we have to get from point A to point B and sometimes we don't have much of a choice for the cost unless we want to hitchhike. There have been some countries were transport will make a difference. In Guatemala you can choose to take an expensive shared private shuttle ($10-$20) or take a public chicken bus with several transfers, longer travel times, and possible tight space ($1-$5). In Colombia we found that the long distance bus fares are negotiable. We would get a dollar or two off every ride and it would really add up. In Argentina, the bus costs are a large chunk of our budget. To minimize the effects we take the cheapest bus available, which generally means that our seats do not recline back as far as in the more expensive options and we are served basic meals, but then again we are not sitting next to livestock so we can't complain.

5. Simple Living. This is general but true. We keep shopping to a minimum: if it isn't in chocolate form, we don't have room for it. We constantly fix our clothes and supplies until they are falling apart and we are forced to replace. Most importantly, we tend to have low key evenings at the hostel hanging out with others instead of spending every night out at the clubs.

There are other ways to save a bundle if they fit your taste: camp instead of hostel, work or volunteer along the way, couchsurf, hitchhike or rideshare (safer in these countries than you think), or travel to fewer locations and stay in each for longer periods of time. We've met bunches of travelers who use one or more of these methods to save cash and stay on the road as long as possible... some people have been out for years (don't worry Mom, we're still coming home in May!).

Hope this helps clear things up. No, we did not win the lottery. No, we did not invest in Apple when we were 4 years old. And yes, it is possible for many of you to hit the road if you want to.

How to Earn a Big Steak Dinner

It's been a big adventure since coming to Patagonia. The towns are remote, the bus rides are long and bumpy, the scenery spectacular. We've had our hands full with outdoors activities and have really soaked up the amazing landscapes. We've arrived in the "Lake District" of Patagonia and it's pine trees and blue lakes and very beautiful.

It's hard to imagine that the scenery gets more dramatic but to put it plainly, it does. Our latest venture was a three day trek through National Park Nahuel Huapi outside the lakeside city of Bariloche. After a couple of chilled out days in the city preparing, we packed our big bags with camping food and sleeping bags and hit the trails.

Being without a tent or camping stove, Nahuel Huapi is a perfect park for us because there are several mountain refuges that house hikers, providing simple beds and cooking facilities. We hiked 26 miles over three days and slept both nights at different "Refugios." The scenery was incredible with jagged rock formations, lagoons formed by mountain runoff, turquoise rivers, and spectacular vistas. Many of the views we've seen on our hikes have been amazing, but here the mountains just felt more dramatic, the colors more vibrant, the hillsides steeper, and the water crisper. The weather was brilliant to boot.

The hikes themselves were fairly easy on days 1 and 3, but our 2nd day's hike was the hardest walk of our trip. For 7 hours we climbed and descended steep ridges, many times scrambling over rocks using our hands and feet, all with our heavy packs. As much hatred as this produced in Kendra's soul, and as much as our quads burned we were rewarded at each peak with incredible views out over the mountain range. The refuges themselves were also fun with hordes of hikers crammed into bunks, tables inside and out for resting the weary, and just great outdoorsy vibes.

When we got back to Bariloche, which is touristy but pleasant and lined with breweries and chocolate shops, we were ravaged and needed proper sustinence. What better time to get our first taste of traditional Argentine "Parrilla?"

Argentina is famous for wine and giant, high quality steaks and it was just what our tired bodies needed. We headed out to the best "Parrilla," ("grill") in town, and ordered two massive steaks and a big plate of fries in addition to our tasty bottle of wine. We were first served a bowl of freshly baked bread with Argentinian "Chimichurri" (olive oil and herbs). Our steaks were then cut fresh and prepared on the huge, traditional open grill and could not have been cooked more perfectly. There's no steak sauce, just a little salt to bring out the natural flavor of the meat which was indescribably good. We gorged and soaked up this essential Argentinian experience and one which we intend to repeat.

Then we went out for ice cream. Not a bad day at the office.