Jake's Journeys

So my budget for 3 months in South America wasn’t very large to begin with—around 3k. After splurging by doing the Inca Trail and eating in top 10 world restaurants in Peru, I find myself with most of my money used up as I start my journey in Colombia. I flew into Bogota by myself yesterday, having finished my travels with my brother in Brazil. I will stay a few days here, then I will head to a smaller town to seek some kind of work to keep me going, whether that’s teaching English or volunteering at a hostel (or maybe even working on a farm lol). I need to make my $500 last for about a month and a half, as my flight home is on August first 😅.

Zach and I have explored the wonders of Peru since I last wrote here. As we headed south towards Cusco, we wandered the ruins of the massive mud fortress known as Chan Chan, braved altitude sickness and hiked to the pristinely blue Laguna 69 in Huaraz, ate at a top 10 restaurant in the world in Lima (blowing like half my travel budget in one go), and sand boarded down the massive sand dunes surrounding the oasis of Huacachina. We made it all the way to Cusco (only being held back when our bus caught fire in the middle of the highway at 1 am) and immediately embarked on the four-day journey of the Inca Trail as we approached our ultimate destination: Machu Picchu.

3 months into my backpacking journey I have made it to South America! Last time I wrote here I was in my final days in Vietnam. Since then I spent a month traveling through Cambodia and the Philippines. We celebrated a New Years festival on a tropical Cambodian island (where the local teenagers poured baby powder all over our faces), visited Angkor Wat at sunrise, went to a rat museum in Siem Reap, went scuba diving with turtles and swam with whale sharks in Cebu, and visited my extended family who hosted us in Manila and Cebu City.