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Copacabana: What we saw (September 14, 2019)
Ever since Chile gained control of the former Bolivian department of Litoral on the Pacific coast*, Bolivia has been a landlocked country, and today, Copacabana boasts the only beach in Bolivia. On the weekends, this place is hopping. Tourists come up from La Paz to spend the weekend at the beach. The South American Tourist… Read more
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Copa-Copacabana: Where we stayed (yes, it’s worth its own post) (September 13 2019)
I don’t know how or why or even if Copacabana, Bolivia is in any way related to Copacabana beach in Brazil, or any of the many nightclubs that bear that name, but it’s fun to say, and that was our next destination. After the tired-tired-so-very-tired boat ride to the floating islands of the Uros, we… Read more
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Puno and Lake Titicaca (September 12, 2019)
We decided to escape Peru by land and take the “Bolivia Hop” bus from Cusco to Copacabana, then on to La Paz. Friends who visited Bolivia a number of years ago had given us a very strong recommendation for a place to stay in Copacabana, so we planned for several days’ layover there – partly… Read more
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HoneymoonSweet Re(re)boot
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… Read more
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Cusco and the Sacred Valley (Part 2)
Oof – keeping this up to date is proving a challenge. In real time, we’ve just arrived in Chile after an amazing jaunt through Bolivia. In blog-time, we’re still in Cusco and haven’t even made it onto the Inca Trail yet. Bear with us. In addition to the Sacred Valley sites I talked about in… Read more
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On the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
We did the Inca Trail trek from September 5th to 8th, and we honestly can’t say enough good things about SAM Travel, the tour company we trekked to Machu Picchu with (thanks for the recommendation, Connie and Adrian!). We saw so much. We learned so much. We could go on for hours. Days, probably. So…… Read more
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Cusco and the Sacred Valley (Part 1)
We arrived in Cusco on August 31st, and stayed in the vicinity until September 11th. The highlight were the four days we spent hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, but we’ll make a separate post about that. We spent lots of time here before the hike to make sure we were well acclimatized to… Read more
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Galapagos 5: Plastics in Paradise
Not long before we left Ottawa we spent a day at Britannia Beach; and while walking along the shore, Sarah spotted one of those plastic six-pack holders – you know, those rugged plastic things with six rings that we used to see in those awful pictures of turtles with deformed shells, or caught around fish?… Read more
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Galapagos 4: Other Things We Learned (mostly rules)
If our tour guides and hotel hosts are to be believed, the Galapagos Islands may one of the most regulated places on earth. One of our guides mentioned that a lot of this stems from UNESCO threatening to take away its status over inaction towards shark finning, drug smuggling, and other illegal fishing activity in… Read more
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Galapagos 3: Land we saw on land
The Galapagos Islands aren’t just full of wildlife – they’re also full of geology. They are located above a hotspot in the earth’s crust that has been active for at least 20 million years. The very oldest islands in the group were likely formed between 8 and 10 million years ago, but have have eroded… Read more
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Galapagos 2: Things we saw on land
Plants and animals, coming right up! First up: Flora Bryn and an Opuntia (prickly pear) cactus. There are four sub-species of Opuntia that are endemic to the islands. “Endemic” means these species are found nowhere else (while “native” species occur naturally on the islands, and “introduced” or “invasive” species were brought by humans). Bryn described… Read more
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Galapagos 1: Things we saw under (or in) the water
We spent almost two weeks in the Galapagos Islands – we visited three of the four inhabited islands (Santa Cruz, Isabela and San Cristobal) and took several day trips to various other smaller islands and sites around the main population centres. We decided that rather than post for the days that we spent on each… Read more
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We huffed and we puffed and we walked up and down.
Did we mention Quito is full of topography? Also, geography! We visited the Mitad del Mundo (“middle of the world”) site, which is along the equatorial plane, though not on the actual precise 0.000, 0.000 equator itself. The Mitad del Mundo was built so tourists could take goofy photos with one foot in each hemisphere,… Read more
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Now On: The Other Side of the World
Wow it was a gorgeous takeoff from Ottawa Tuesday morning with lots of low-lying fog, orangey pink sunrise, and flat calm rivers in the valley. Flights went well. Connection through Montreal was somehow easy and painless. Connection through Miami was over 9 hours of sleep deprived wandering around – even though the city looks beautiful… Read more
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Two Days From the Equator
Turns out you need a lot of things to wander for two months! We are nearing the end of the seemingly interminable to-do-checklist phase of trip preparations – in 36 hours we’ll be in an airport preparing to flee the continent for a trip of a lifetime. (Very much looking forward to the logistics-heavy portion… Read more
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we’re killing it with the to do list tonight
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This is a blog post
We are learning to blog!
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Honeymoon? Sweet! 