With a few weeks back in the states to “relax” a bit before continuing to Africa we’ve had a bit of time to take stock of how we’ve done and, almost as importantly, how our budget has done.
A reminder of how all this works.  Every dollar amount represents how much the two of us, combined, spent on the average day in a given country.  Airfare to and from the continent is included in transportation in the totals line and aren’t applied to any specific continent.  Even with the airfare this is less than we used to spend living in the US.  For more information visit our spending page.
Colombia:  Coming out of Central America, this beautiful and friendly country was a …

Now that we’re off to Africa we figured it was about time to get our Latin America summary out there. Epic bus journeys in the south and more than a month of nights sleeping on buses…its been a real adventure.
Here’s a summary of the most “fun” statistics for the last 9 or so months:
8.5 – Months spent on the road
33 – Nights spent on a bus (Jillian’s note: We should have calculated our total hours on the bus!)
23 – Nights spent couchsurfing
20 – Hours of longest single bus ride
4 – Viewings of Transporter 3 on the bus
2 – Bathroom breaks from the bus where there was no bathroom present
15 – Countries visited
41 – Passport Stamps
2 – Hemispheres enjoyed
2 – …

We’ve survived our first week of “intermission”. In between forkfuls of turkey we’ve been answering questions about the trip. Lots and lots of questions. What was your favorite (fill in the blank here)? What was the worst…? well you get the picture. So here it is folks, our best and our worst of the last 8 months.
Best Way to Start a 2 Year Trip – Baja, Mexico.  Grinning ear to ear as those grey whales just swam right on up to let you pet them…then jumping into the water to swim with some sea lions.
Worst Night On a Bus – Bolivia…going from La Paz down the death road to the Amazon where we weren’t sure if we’d wake up alive.
Stupidest Decision …

Usually when we write a little summary post of a country we do so at the end when we’re already in a new county. Right now though, that wouldn’t seem quite right. Brasil is so different from where we’ve been that we really just need to share that now.
First off, they don’t speak Spanish here. Not since our first days in Mexico have we felt this lost when communicating with people and it has been very frustrating. We hear the Portuguese, respond back in Spanish, and everyone just looks at each other like they don’t know what happened. I have vowed that I will not be traveling like this in Africa…Swahili lessons here I come.
Constantly …