Five Years Later...

It has now been five years since my Latin American Adventure.  After getting back to my life as a professor, it has taken me this long to make the time to complete the blog!  Traveling was fantastic but I missed math.  I knew then I had chosen my career well :-)  In reviewing and editing the blog entries, I was reminded of what an amazing time it was.  It is now absolutely clear that for me it was the right choice to travel before becoming an assistant professor.  I have kept traveling and having fun adventures since then, but those six months were a special time in my life.  Thank you to all of you who made it an extraordinary Latin American adventure.

Love and happy travels,
Angel

Marcela's Graduation!

After twelve weeks of living on the road, it was wonderful to come back to Honduras to see Marcela graduate from her residency in surgery! We now have two fun loving and beer drinking surgeons in the family!








We are so proud of Marcela!












We are also silly and affectionate!












Felicidades Marcelita!
















And now back to my regular life...  It was a wonderful Latin American Adventure!

Lima

Going to visit San Martin de Porres in Lima, Peru is a trip that began with my grandmother's pulperia (store) with the saint's name. There was a raffle where she prayed to him to help her. Her prayer came true and with those raffle winnings she started the store with which she would end up putting my mom through medical school!












San Martin's symbol is the broom since as an illegitimate child of mixed race he could not be a monk at the monastery where he cleaned and worked as the nurse!

Even an agnostic like me could not help loving San Martin!

Here I am fulfilling a promise my grandma made so many years ago! How lucky can a guy be?

Matt is angry at Pizarro. Even hundreds of years after his death...










You know you are not in the U.S.A. when the animal tied to the post is a llama!











For Matt and I, Lima was just a place to fulfill a promise and catch flights home.  Hung, went to the Peruvian Amazon rain forest from Cuzco.  We all know that guy is hard core!

Inca Trail

Hung, Matt and I at the beginning of the Inca Trail!  The path that was once traveled by Inca messengers from Cosco is now being traveled by 450 pound of fury!

This is our hiking crew with the hiking guide (Freddy) wearing a ski mask.  There were rumors that he had chewed a bit too much coca :-)

The Inca Trail had all kinds of wild life, including an epic tarantula VS wasp battle!

What would a stroll in the Andes be without a sighting of a wild llama, or is it an alpaca?











We may have been doing the Inca Trail but our expedition looked more like an REI advertisement!








The sights along the way were pretty spectacular!  Continuing the REI advertisement...










We made it! More like our porters made it, we did it the easy way :-)

There it is... Machu Picchu, the hidden city in the Andes... behind the fog!  We decided to stay an extra day to have a better look.

This is what happens as you ponder what wishes to make when you will wear a fita from Bonfim for more than a year! While hanging out above Machu Picchu (on Huayna Picchu)!




Hung was a lot more pragmatic :-)
















It was worth it to stay an extra day after the fog cleared to get this view. It was a moment to remember forever!

Cosco

I arrived in Cuzco (Cosco in the Quechua) and made friends with the performers on the train.  They invited me to come see their performance when we arrived.










The performance involved lighting her outfit on fire!  She was hot anyway, I didn't quite understand why it was needed :-)

After the dance performance, we celebrated with some German backpacking doctors.  There must be something about the medical profession that leads to backpacking.  They were certainly over-represented in my trip.

I met up with Matt Berman and Hung Quan. After months of traveling with friends I met the day before, it was fun to share all my new stories with friends I had know for years!

Hung and Matt are adventurous eaters as well as travelers. Here we see them eating a large rodent! Sometimes I feel OK about being vegetarian :-)

In this photo, we see Matt Berman using his hardened New York City bargaining skills with a extremely disarming Peruvian little girl who hands down was the better bargainer of the lot!

The jet lag finally caught up with Matt!








This is the view from our hostel. Not bad eh?