The Final Blog Post

South America in Numbers

Some interesting (and some amusing) digits to summarize our trip;

• Number of days travelled: 108
• Number of countries visited: 6
• Number of times we entered (and exited) Argentina: 4
• Number of photos taken: 7103
• Number of kilometers travelled (approximate): 10,000
• Number of buses taken: 48
• Number of hours spent on buses: 281 (equivalent to 11.7 days, or 10.8% of our trip... but a lot of this was overnight)
• Longest bus trip: 19 hours
• Number of night buses: 13
• Nights spent in tents: 7
• Number of hours spent on planes: 31
• Number of different meats eaten: 13 (chicken, llama, beef, alpaca, pork, guinea pig, fish, viscacha, lamb, ostrich, goat, deer, wild boar)
• Number of different pairs of cheap sunglasses used = 9 (6 for Lisa, 3 for Alex) (we each left with 1 pair, and returned with 1 pair... the other 7 were broken, lost or drowned)
• Kg of checked baggage we came with (together): 14 + 18 = 32
• Kg of checked baggage we left with (together): 12.5 + 19.5 + 20 = 53 (Merry Christmas everyone!)

Funny facts from South America

Some entertaining facts we don't think we actually mentioned anywhere in the blog.

• We went 4 months without a glass of milk
• We went 4 months without fast-food (including Starbucks, even though that was an option later in the trip)
• We are completely out of the loop with world news, current events, and popular culture (we’d only heard of 1 of the 12 “new release” movies on the return flight)
• We did laundry about 1/3^rd as often as at home, and had about 1/8^th of the number of the clothes. Figure that one out!
• We have a whole new perspective on travel times. The 10-hour red-eye return plane ride from BA to Dallas felt like a refreshing cat-nap after some of our long-haul bus trips.
• With only a few exceptions (of only a few hours each time), we spent 24 hours a day, for 108 days straight in each other’s company... and are still friends.
• We had lots of time to stew over life-plans (and made many future travel plans)
• It will take us some time to get used to North-American style bathrooms again. We were pretty used to cold water (or no water), no soap or paper towel (especially north of Argentina) and having to dispose of used toilet paper in the waste basket (not in the toilet!).