March 24th ... two years have passed since I left the USA. What can I say? Before I left home, I thought I would be in South East Asia by now checking out beaches in Thailand and temples in Cambodia. But here I am, only in Brazil with several more South American countries remaining to be explored. So what´s it like traveling for 2 years straight??? Certainly there must be things from home that I miss, right? Of course there are... I miss getting the cell ph...

Brazil´s self proclaimed capital of Reggae music is Sao Louis... a cool colonial town where all the buildings are covered in Portuguese tiles, supposedly to combat the heat. I arrived with my buddy Boris after a miserable, overpriced, 14 hour bus ride over the worst road I´ve ever been on. I didn´t know you could even take a bus on a road like this. And when the road was not a pothole infested mess of moon sized craters, you know what they put on t...

Well one thing is for certain... I cannot speak Portuguese. I speak more like Span-guese or a Portug-ish combination of Spanish and Portuguese. The languages are similar but different enough that I can´t use it... yet. So for now, my travel buddy Boris does all the speaking and information seeking as it´s his first language. This sucks though, going back to square one with a new language and communicating like a 2 year old. My next move was to make the...

I caught up to my friends from Lima here in Manaus Brazil where I will celebrate the infamous Carnaval... Brazilian style. Manaus is a huge city plopped right in the middle of the Amazon along the river; complete with high rise buildings and the leftover architecture and opulence from what was once a super wealthy city in the early 1900´s due the boom in the rubber industry. For us, it´s just a run down looking place to throw a huge party and the Brazil...

After a 12 hour speed boat journey down the Amazon, I arrived in Santa Rosa, Peru where Tabatinga Brazil and Leticia Colombia make up the tri-border region. I received my exit stamp from Peru immigration and headed over to Leticia where the best hotels, restaurants and services are. From here, I found a tour operator to get me into the jungle to have a look around and I also met up with my friend Martha from Colombia who is spending her vacation in this area. T...