6 Months In

Well, we’re arguably about halfway done. Lots happens in six months on the road. Many events back home, and many discoveries on the road. Time doesn’t stop just because you’ve left your home country.

The adventures we have had up to this point have flirted with the realms of awesome and absurd. The landscapes have been brilliant. The people wonderful. The challenges tough. But it has all been unforgettable.

The themes of this trip are slowly changing. Our perception of ambition has warped. Too many times you hear at home about how far behind you are in a field because you didn’t start it at 18. And then the classic “well Morgan Freeman didn’t make it big acting till he was 30,” as a reminder that you can do anything. Then you brush it all off cause there’s too much to focus on in your day to day life anyways.

We have learned that you really can have the ability do anything that you put your mind too, it just takes two major external resources. Time and money. You need time to think, plan and act out on what your dreams are. And money to afford your sustenance. We’ve gained enough of those resource’s to put them together to complete one dream, travelling. Now we have ideas for more projects in the future. But these resources in the quantities needed are not available to a lot of people.

Like our Huayhuash guide Rosmel in Peru. He would talk about retiring from being a guide in 3 years. Then he would have enough saved up to start a family. He has the money for his dreams. Just not the time. Many American tourists that we have met are in the same boat. With only 2-3 weeks off of work per year, they do not have the time to take on the challenges and projects like they want to.

The majority of people fall into the first category though. There are many impoverished people within the Andes that are doing whatever they can to get by. Running their stalls at the market every day, hawking whatever they can on the street. There’s no money to think beyond how to eat for the next week.

With time and money, you have the resources to take on the world however you want. The final ingredient comes from you. Perseverance.

We have learned a lot about perseverance on this trip. Like from Yulia, a mountaineer from Bolivia who has climbed the worlds most fearsome peaks, including Everest, while staying true to herself dressed in her Cholita outfit, and carrying everything in her striped and coloured fabric sack. And from ourselves, on Huayhuash and Huyana Potosi in terms of physical perseverance. But mentally too. Struggling to eat for a week in Baños was hard to get through. So was the final day of the O Trek, hobbling ourselves to the finish line. Tenacity has come to us to a new degree, and the ambition for new adventures is greater.

What lays ahead? Who knows. Probably bigger challenges. Different scenarios. New languages. New people. New cultures. New ambition, and new adventure. We’re excited to see.