Not having blond hair and blue eyes, as is typical in my country, helped me blend in with locals in pretty much all the countries we visited. Even my name is quite popular in Latin America.

My Peruvian, even more so, could have easily been mistaken for an Argentinian or Mexican. And that helped us a lot, especially trying to get the local prices. In some places, however, being overcharged was unavoidable. I remember in Haiti I was asked to pay 24 times more (I calculated!) for a pineapple in the market. Sure, I definitely didn’t look like a local there, but luckily I had some local friends with me who talked the old man into giving me the fair price.

This is how I wanted to start writing this time. And only at that point it dawned on me that I did have blue eyes!!!

So scratch that! Let me start over.

I bet my Peruvian didn’t expect to carry two fully loaded backpacks at some point during this trip. And he didn’t think he’d have to clean the terrible looking bathroom after me (I’m so so sorry!) Or maybe he did. That’s what an adventure and being on the road is all about, right?

So before we jump to the bad, let’s start with the good. I can’t count how many amazing things I experienced during this trip, but I will mention a few highlights:

• Hiking up and down the canyon. The trek took us 4 days in total as we wanted to visit the ruins off the beaten track. Every mosquito bite was worth seeing the Choquequirao in Peru, but ,damn it, the trek was so hard (and it was my first time, too) I cried. The flip flops I was wearing didn’t help, nor did my Converse.

• Freediving in Utila, Honduras. It felt good to learn something new. It felt even better to stop for a while and sleep in the same bed for a couple of weeks.

• Teaching English in a small town of San Pedro by Lago Peten Itza in Guatemala. I enjoyed it so much that it inspired me to get my TEFL certificate later on, which eventually brought me back to Latin America a few years later. Plus, I made good friends with a really lovely girl from Australia.

• Camping in Atacama Desert, Chile. Everything about that place was magnificent.

• Reaching the top of the world in Parque Nacional Huascaran, Peru. Freezing cold. Freaking beautiful.

• Being one of the two temporary inhabitants on one of the islands in San Blas, Panama

• Having a $1 lobster in Cuba. The first time at the restaurant we paid $10 USD. The second time in the less fancy restaurant it cost us $5 USD. Then finally we got freshly caught lobster for $1 USD. Delicious.

• Fighting dinosaurs in Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. Who would have thought, eh?

• Trying out the famous sopa de caracol. We liked the soup and the restaurant so much, that we went out of our way to come back there the second time.

Thanks to all the wonderful places I got to see, now I’ve got my list of the three most beautiful beaches in the world:

1. Port Salut, Haiti

2. Playa Bahia de las Aguilas, Dominican Republic

3. Beach strip in Zona Hotelera in Cancun, Mexico

Where there is good, there’s bad, and where there are highs, there are lows. The trip didn’t lack the latter, which only made it more memorable – looking back, not at that precise moment! It’s hard to see the beauty of the place when you are lying on the bottom of the boat and praying for it to stop moving as the contents of your stomach move just at much…