Home Free "I hope you never lose your sense of wonder, you get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger... Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance, and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance." - Lee Ann Womack ("I Hope You Dance") The biggest festival yet was going on my last day in Cusco. I ventured out for an hour to get cash and some last-minute travel necessities, then hastened back to the hostel, driven by a taxing...

Stranger Than Fiction "I have to say, in all modesty, I've been to some truly breathtakingly beautiful places by any accounts. Machu Picchu takes the crown." - Anthony Bourdain For my dad, who taught me to never never never give up. As always, I'd prepared myself for the worst. It looked like I was actually going to make it to Machu Picchu, as impossible as that was to believe. Still, I armed myself against a myriad of potential disappointments. I could get fo...

Days 3 & 4: A Thousand-and-One Uses for Toilet Paper "There's always gonna be another mountain. I'm always gonna wanna make it move. Always gonna be an uphill battle. Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose. It ain't about how fast I get there. Ain't about what's waiting on the other side. It's the climb." - Miley Cyrus ("The Climb") By the third morning I was digging my First Aid kit out of my suitcase. I rooted through the contents - BandAids, AfterBite, Polyspo...

Day 2: Bombs, Bulls, Bridges and Beetle Backs "Everything you want is on the other side of fear." - Jack Canfield I woke up at 5AM thinking we were getting bombed. The blast could have been fireworks if it weren't so close. It shook the lodge and startled me into falling out of bed. When we met up after breakfast, Edwin explained that there was always a festival dedicated to some saint or other going on in Peru, and the people liked to celebrate with cannons (a...

Day 1: Don't Feed Horses Bananas "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Lao Tzu I have trouble believing I'm awake when suddenly I find myself cruising across a wide open plain at a flat-out gallop. I have absolutely no idea where we are. The landscape looks like something the Riders of Rohan would have ranged in The Lord of the Rings. To my left, a pair of sheep are charging along beside us, either panicked or infected by our energy. To m...