We made it! Our stuff is in storage somewhere in Brooklyn, my thesis is (almost) done, we´re fully innoculated and documented, and we finally arrived in Buenos Aires a few days ago. We´ve been getting all kinds of reactions when we tell people we´re traveling for six months around South America. I don´t think I fully realized it myself until I was standing there, carrying my life on my back, face to face with our "basic" $15/night hostal room that makes our tiny New York apartment seem palacial, and thought - Oh wow, we´re doing this for six months. Quickly followed by - Why exactly are we doing this for six months??

It started when I went to Peru a couple years ago. I was there for two weeks to hike Machu Piccu and ran into a bunch of couples traveling for extended periods and thought, I´d like to do that someday. And now here we are! Considering I´ve never traveled for longer than a month, and Josh has never traveled outside the U.S. (unless you count Tijuana??), this is a pretty big deal for us.

So far everything has gone relatively smoothly, which means that nothing whatsoever has gone according to plan and everything takes twice as long as you think.So I guess it´s good we don´t have too much of a plan to begin with. We do have a very basic itinerary that we´re hoping to fill in as we talk with other travelers and locals. We´re hanging out here in Buenos Aires for a couple weeks while I finish that almost done thesis and Josh takes Spanish lessons. He´s become quite adept at requesting a double coffee with a little milk, except for the one time he asked the waitress for a double friend (compañero) instead of coffee (cortado). Needless to say, she looked a litlte relieved when I showed up...

Next we plan to head north through Iguazu Falls, which is supposedly much much larger than Niagra Falls. I think maybe the largest waterfall in the world? And then up the coast of Brazil through Rio and Salvador, hop a flight to Colombia (hoping to visit the wonderful women I lived with last summer in Bogota - hola Nancy and Amparo!), and then weave our way down through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile to end up in Patagonia in October.

Of course this is all contingent on us staying on budget with the ever deteriorating dollar. So far we´ve been doing OK here, but Argentine inflation is at 25% right now and everyone´s said they´ve noticed prices increasing significantly. Especially on food, which has meant that we´ve basically spent our first few days here scavenging for affordable and somewhat healthy meals. It´s telling that Josh wasn´t too worried about the possibility of our valuables getting stolen until our ham disappeared from the hostal refridgerator!

But we´re getting around and settling in, and getting used to this crazy life of having very little we actually have to do. Tough transition, I´m sure you can empathize... We didn´t bring a laptop with us but we´re hoping to update this blog a couple times a week from Internet cafes and would love to hear from any of you who follow along!