The unorganized, unedited, and embarrassingly unfocused journal entries from my time backpacking in South America the summer of 2017, which make up a large chunk draft of my thesis for the University of South Florida’s Honors College. The final draft can be accessed here:
Day 1: Panama City
Saturday, 4.6.2016 I’ve never written for any consistent amount of time, and although I truly do love to write, there is anxiety in my hands thinking about the task I’ve set for myself over these next two months. As part of the University of South Florida Honors College’s thesis requirement, I’ve decided to spend two…
Day 2: Panama City
Before I say anything else, it is incredibly hot here in Panama City. How people have lived here for centuries is beyond me. Maybe the heat helps to explain why I haven’t met many Panamanians in the United States – in the same way that an average December evening in Omaha is uncomfortable to Molly…
Day 3: Panama City
Nothing academic happened yesterday. The city had been getting more and more humid for several days until noon, when the sky opened up and rain drenched everything in sight. Molly and I had to spend the morning dealing with some unfinished business from Florida, and by the time we were ready to explore it was…
Day 4: Panama City
The heat has claimed it’s first victim. Molly’s computer overheated last night, meaning that we get to investigate a new facet of Panamanian life today: access to consumer electronic repair. Which may not sound like much, but the more Molly and I talk about it, the more significant this aspect of life becomes. Think about…
Days 5-10: The San Blas Islands
Wednesday 8.6.2016-Monday 13.6.2016 Where to start, where to start… The past week has been one of the most beautiful of my life. Molly and I have spent five days as passengers on a sailboat, traveling between Porto Lindo, Panama and Cartagena, Colombia. We weaved in and out of the San Blas Islands, ate fresh lobster…
Day 11: Cartagena
I can not think of a better introduction to Colombia than the city of Cartagena. Brightly colored tight streets weave through diverse and growing communities, sweltering with the Carribean heat during the day and igniting with a goldenrod sunlight in the evening. Avenues are full of tourists buying delicious empanadas and ignoring (or not) the…
Day 12: Cartagena
Wednesday The struggle for a decent internet connection continues. Drafts get lost and formatting is difficult, so I apologize for the tardiness of my posting. Colombia is one of eight or nine “mega diverse” countries in the world, meaning that the state contains severally vastly different ecosystems. Cartagena is the largest city along the Carribean…
Day 13: Cartagena
Lost another draft. Struggling in paradise, as they say. Today is Molly’s birthday. It’s the first birthday of hers that we’ve had the opportunity to celebrate together and the first one that we’ve spent in, well, another country, so we started the festivities last night and ended sometime around 4 in the morning. This was…
Day 14: Medellin
Cartagena has given us many good memories and several late nights. We boarded a flight from Cartagena’s international airport (situated in a poor suburb outside the city, and characteristically surrounded by graffiti lamenting the destruction of local life due to the crushed property values in the neighborhood) around 3 in the afternoon and flew in…
Day 15: Medellin
Sunday 19.6.2016 As with many days, we started our morning with a conversation about politics. Jorge took Molly and I to Exito to talk about the coming day and discuss the intracacies of a favorite topic for non-Americans: how the hell did Donald Trump happen. Jorge is a personal fan of Dr. Ben Carson and…
Day 16: Medellin
Monday 20.6.2016 Molly and I decided that today would be spent learning about the history of Medellin. We managed to get up reasonably early, with the goal of making it to the prestigeous Modern Art Museum and taking a walking tour around the historic downtown afterwards. Of course, today is Monday, so the museum…
Day 17: Manizales
Tuesday 21.6.2016 After pushing our time in Medellin back a day already, Molly and I decided to leave for Manizales to meet up with Guerillmo, an Internet pen pal for the past three months and the Don of a small cattle ranch in rural Colombia. We had no idea what to expect and the shock…
Days 18-25: Manizales
Wednesday 22.6.2016 – Wednesday 29.6.2016 Writing about Manizales is going to be hard. Guerillmo, our host, challenged us to embrace the environment of remote Colombia fully and using an iPad to publish my thoughts seems sacrilegious after meeting people who don’t know how to read. So I apologize in advance for the difficulty that I…
Day 26: Cali
Thursday 30.6.2016 Cali is our last stop in Colombia and the last major city in the country before reaching Ecuador. Cali, Quito, and much of Peru all the way down to southern Chile are walled off from the continent by the mighty Andes Mountains, all resting on humid plains and experiencing a tropical heat unlike…
Day 27: Cali
Friday 1.7.2016 Cartagena has a gorgeous seaside, buttressed by a historical wall and sharing the sound of crashing waves with denizens of her cobbled streets and fast evenings. Medellin rests at the bottom of a valley, awash in silver light and low clouds while creeping up the sides of green valleys. Manizales offers an unprecedented…
Day 28: Ipiales
Saturday 2.7.2016 No pictures today, just thoughts. We have left Cali and are on a 12 hour bus ride to the Colombian border town of Ipiales. We will spend the night in the small town and then cross the border into Ecuador tomorrow morning. Nothing has been broken, stolen, or otherwise damaged in at least…
Day 29: Quito
Sunday 3.7.2016 Traveling last summer had three distinctive parts. From Istanbul to Budapest, life is a blur. There are inhospitable moments (and certainly my least safe) but the blur is one of ecstasy and color. Imagine watching the best movie of your life and, when you’re done, attempting to describe the feeling you felt as…
Day 30: Quito
Monday 4.7.2016 I’m in Lima now, finally getting over a cold that has not made the past few days very enjoyable. Time to play catch up. Quito is a funny city. At 2 million people, it is a small metropolis situated in the shadow of a volcano with a historical penchant for destruction. Earthquakes plague…
Day 31: Quito
Tuesday 5.7.2016 Our final full day in Quito was packed. Ingrid and Peter joined us from the outset, and we agreed to go on a lengthy three hour walking tour of Quito’s Old Town to start the day. The couple, whom we had dinner with the night before after a trip to the Guayasamin museum…
Day 32: Guayaquil
Wednesday 6.7.2016 I love working in the Study Abroad office because we get to talk to students about traveling. Traveling is one of those things that possesses people; when talking to first time travelers, very much like myself last summer, I would always try to tell them about the parts of being abroad that are…
Day 33: Mancora
Thursday 7.7.2016 We couldn’t leave Guayaquil quickly enough. We were on the bus by 7:00 am and had bunkered down for a long trip to Mancora with a potentially difficult border crossing in Tumbes, on the border of Ecuador and Peru. It’s hard to describe how excited we were for this part of our trip.…
Day 34: Mancora
Friday 8.7.2016 Imagine thin green drapes coloring morning light as the first image of your day. Before the drapes is a white room, indescript; beyond the green is a seascape lit more clearly than though possible, with waves defined miles away from your window and a barricade of palm trees hiding the shore from view.…
Day 35: Mancora
Saturday 9.7.2016 I’m still pretty behind on my writing. The goal is to catch up by the time we leave Cusco, which is…. Well, chronologically, challenging. Our last day in Mancora was work-focused. Molly and I are also applying for places to live in Tampa, so our third roommate (and personal guardian angel) Cameron sent…
Day 36: Lima
Sunday 10.7.2016 Lima, Lima, Lima… Where to begin. I’m from a place with nice weather. I take this weather for granted. Jacksonville, Florida has wonderful summers, cool enough autumns (without that “color change” that Molly always talks about), winters that require a coat maybe for a week, and dazilingly blossoming springs. When I go to…
Day 37: Lima
Monday 11.7.2016 The vast majority of our first day in Lima was spent, using the vernacular that Molly and I developed, “shmubbing around.” Successful shmubbing is remarkably easy – typically, only a couch and TV are required, preferably with an accessible stash of junk food. We stayed in doors all day because after a while,…
Day 38: Lima
Tuesday 12.7.2016 Today we took a giant walking tour of downtown Lima, which provides some excellent material to relate to my points about Kwasi Wiredu in Day 37 with some examples in our modern world. To start, Lima isn’t really named Lima. Lima was originally spelled “Limak”, and was the name of the settlement around…
Day 39: Lima
Wednesday 13.7.2016 If you want to learn to speak a language, it is imperative to talk to people who speak so fast that you don’t understand what they’re saying. Only by clobbering through a few months of essentially speechlessness can we start to understand the regional pecularities, idioms, and connotations of a language. Learning a…
Day 40: Lima
Thursday 14.7.2016 I’m still sick. Pro-tip: take probiotics before leaving the States. Our religious belief in hyper-sterilazation may make us feel better about eating those disgusting burgers, but it impedes the American immune system when exposed to the Real World. I’m bitter. Being sick sucks. Molly and I spent the day together. A fellow traveler…
Day 41: Lima
Friday 15.7.2016 Our time in Lima is coming to an end and my impression of the city is worse off than when we arrived. It’s difficult to describe this city in such a context that would make sense for Americans; it is large and sprawling, like many of our cities back home, but lacks a…
Day 42: Cusco
Saturday 16.7.2016 Today is a special day. My brother, Zach, is turning 20. I’m not home to wish him well, but as one of the most fiercely independent people I know, I’m not worried about that bothering him. I wish instead that he was able to see this new place with me. Best of luck,…
Day 43: Cusco
Sunday 17.7.2016 From the rooftop terrace of our inner-city hostel, we could see all of Cusco. Like so many other Latin American cities, the town is built into a valley and at night one has e feeling of swimming in a fishbowl of bioluminescent creatures. Fireworks sounding an awful lot like gunshots went off every…
Day 44: Cusco
Monday 18.7.2016 Our stay in Cusco has charmed us. The grittiness of poverty is never far from view, as are examples of architecture displaying historical injustice – flat land for the rich, steep land for the poor. Walking up and down these streets gives us an appreciation for those peoples who have to carry their…
Day 45: Aguas Calientes
Tuesday 19.7.2016 At 5 in the morning, Molly and I were packed and ready to go. Our hostel had called a cab to take us to the nearby train station in time for our early morning trip to Aguas Calientes, the closest village to Machu Picchu and a Disney World-esque town made for foreign tourists.…
Day 46: Aguas Calientes
Wednesday 20.7.2016 It is difficult to describe Machu Picchu. It is equal parts agricultural wonder, ancient ruin, and medieval castle complex. The lighting of the valley in which Machu Picchu sits is a platinum-gold unlike any I have ever seen, and the postcard-worthy Waynapicchu Mountain seems to stand over the battered stone complex like a…
Day 47: Cusco
Thursday 21.7.2016 We took a late train back to Cusco and shared our experiences with Abril and Alejandra. A fleet of taxis awaited our train, and Juan Carlos, our driver, shared a few Quechua vocabulary words with us. It was a mind trip talking to a Quechua-speaking Peruvian taxi driver the day we returned from…
Day 48: Puno
Friday 22.7.2016 I am sick again. Unbelievable. I will never travel out of the country without taking probiotics. I will never travel out of the country without taking probiotics. I will never travel out of the country without taking probiotics. In between fever-assisted naps on our bus ride, the landscape of southern Peru haunts us.…
certification 