First Steps in South America!

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. 

After a quick week of rest in the states, I flew into Quito, Ecuador alone to meet up with some homies. My youngest brother Zach had been living with a host family in Ecuador for a few months teaching English, and my hometown friend Tommy had been backpacking his way down through Central America and into Ecuador as well. We all ended up meeting up in a small mountain town in the Andes called Baños. The three of us, along with some friends Zach met on his program spent our days together zip lining, white water rafting over class 4 rapids, eating some of the best empanadas I have ever tasted, and exploring the town going to salsa bars at night. 

Zach and I are currently on a bus to Cuenca, Ecuador, a small colonial town where we will stay the night with his host family before beginning our journey south into Peru. What was supposed to be a four hour bus ride is now 10 hours for us because of landslides blocking the roads. 3 months into my adventure marks my halfway point. I now begin the next chapter of my journey, exploring a new continent as I venture south across Peru and then eventually into Brazil and Colombia for the next three months.

Scenes from Quito

White-water rafting in Baños

Zip-lining in Baños

The bus from Baños to Cuenca