• Start out with a month of
Spanish immersion school in Cusco, Peru - the sacred city of the Incan empire. Just outside of Cusco, is the Sacred Valley and the way to Machu Picchu.
• I then head to Buenos Aires and take the speed boat across to Uruguay. I have roughly two weeks to spend in this region and it remains flexible.
• From Buenos Aires, I head to Santiago and spend a day exploring the capital city of Chile. There, I meet up with Christine and we head south to Patagonia together. We fly to Punta Arenas, where we spend a day getting all our food and supplies for our backpack. Then we take a 5-hour bus ride to Puerto Natales, the entry point to the Torres del Paine, where we will spend 10 days backpacking. We also follow up the backpack with a two-day kayak trip among the floating glaciers.
• March 1, I shed my soggy layers of fleece and down for my bathing suit and snorkel, as I meet my parents in Quito, Ecuador and continue on an 8-day tour of the Galapagos.
Following that, the three of us head back to my starting city of Cusco, where I introduce them to all my old haunts and we travel and explore Machu Picchu together.
