I'm leaving on Tuesday (I hope - more on that later) for two-and-a-half months of backpacking through South America. I'm currently trying to pack for a trip that's going to involve temperatures as high as 100 (in Cartagena, Colombia) and as low as 0 degrees F (in Uyuni, Bolivia). I have no fewer than seven bottles of various anti-everything medications (anti-malaria, anti-typhoid, anti-altitude sickness, antibiotics...), three kinds of sunscreen with a combined SPF of around 750, a three-dollar copy of
The Brothers Karamazov, and a single pair of jeans.
I also, thanks to the Bolivian government, have no passport, as it is currently in Los Angeles getting a visa sticker. The visa company has sworn up and down I'll have it back by tomorrow. If not, I may be a couple of days late for Carnival. The ECs* have already begun.
My itinerary, insofar as it exists, is as follows:
March 1-15: Brazil
- Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, and Porto Seguro
March 15-31: Colombia
- Bogota, Cartagena, and maybe Medellín
April 1-9: Peru
- Lima, Arequipa, and Titicaca
April 9-17: Bolivia
This is the part that's pretty much set. I have plane tickets, hostel reservations, and travel companions through Bolivia. After that I'm on my own, and my plans pretty much stop. I'll somehow have to make my way down to Buenos Aires in time to leave on May 18, but I'm keeping my options open with regards to how that actually happens. I plan to blog and post pictures pretty regularly, but I'm not going to have a computer with me, so I'll be depending on whatever internet I can find along the way.
*
Experiencia Cultural - see post from April 13, 2008 for more on the genesis of the EC. I sense it's probably going to come up again.
