Note from Button – August 2025: I originally sat down to finish this blog in the fall of 2020, amid that first chaotic year of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions. I thought it’d be nice to post things around the one-year anniversary of our visiting them. But somehow I didn’t ever get around to finishing or publishing these drafts, so I’m picking it up again now. In the spirit of “done is better than perfect”, here we go (again):

October, 2020: Look, it’s been (over) a year. We had a bag stolen in Calama, Chile. We were already behind on posting at that point, and the travel laptop was in the backpack that got stolen, so after that the blog came to a screeching halt. It put a damper on the last couple weeks of the trip altogether, to be honest, but you know, we survived. Our travel insurance eventually came through for us, too, so that was also nice.

We came home. We went back to our jobs. We got through the winter. We’re now getting through a global pandemic. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and we’ve even managed to have some modest adventures this year. I thought surviving two months together on the road on a continent where we knew literally no one and didn’t really speak the language might be a little intense, but as we approach 7 months of restrictions here in Ottawa, I can honestly say I am so glad Bryn is my quaranteammate.

So as the days get shorter (again) and we come up on the one year anniversary of returning home (eesh, what *is* time?) (Button notes in 2025…the SIX year anniversary of this trip…), we’re really, really going to get this dang thing finished before we forget everything we learned. And at this point, so much has happened politically in the countries we visited that we’re going to have to write 2020 codas to everything. So. Ready?

Here we go.