So while in Lima we got some visas (Bolivia and Brazil) and cooked for ourselves for once. We slept in the same beautiful apartment for more than 3 nights in a row and even showed a couple of friends from from our Huaraz trek around for a day. Mostly though, we did our best to meet up with difference couchsurfers in different parts of town. (If you´re new to this blog and don´t know what Couchsurfing is, click here)
So we wrote a personal ad.
Well, not quite. Since we didn´t need a place to stay we posted on the Lima message boards looking for anyone who might want to meet us or practice their English. We …

Well we’ve made it to middle earth, well sort of. We made officially made it to the Southern Hemisphere crossing mitad del mundo (the middle of the earth) or as its more widely known, the equator. Determined by a French expedition in 1736, the true equator lies about 200m from the monument and “official” equator marking. Needless to say we did the “official” equator nonsense before moving on to the GPS determined real equator. In what can only be described as Equitorial Disney World, the “official” equator monument lies in a theme park of sorts. They even had the Polaroid people there to take your picture in front of the monument for $10. A park and leisure area with pavilions …

Today is our last day in Bogota, on the one hand we can’t believe we’ve stayed here almost a week and on the other we wish we could spend a few more days. We’ve really enjoyed Bogota, it is a modern city with public transportation, parks, cafes and plenty to do.
Perhaps we’re enamored because its so different than Central America, or because we have great CS hosts, but either way its been a great start to South America. I can honestly say that its the first city we’ve been to since March where I could see myself living.
There’s been a lot to do here, we’ve hit a lot of museums but the one worth highlighting is the …

The same thing forward, the same thing backward…a palindrome. We had finally made it to the Panama Canal.
Arriving in Panama City at the crack of dawn presented a new problem for us. Usually when we arrive at dawn we walk into a hotel and sleep for a couple more hours. This time we walked to six different hotels before finding one (which ended up being the most expensive thus far of the entire trip) that didn’t want to charge us by the hour. Things were really going well.
As one of Spain’s first settlements in the Americas, Panama City has tons of old Spanish ruins. To be honest, these weren’t particularly special but what was interesting …