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 – …

It should be no surprise that along with lots of ruins, whitewater and trekking, our tour of the America’s also included beer. Lots and lots of beer. From Mexico to Argentina beer seems to be the local beverage of choice, and almost always its cheaper than soda or sometimes even bottled water. It was not unusual for us to find a liter of beer for less than $3. When it’s that cheap you just have to try it. So we did.
On what is now called our quest for beervana (thanks to our friends for the name), we’ve sampled the local brew in every locale, from ice-cold Salva Vida in Honduras to an amber Beagle down in …

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 …