The Long Road to a Christmas Surprise (Interlude)

La Vuelta a la Madre Patria (Return to the Mother Land)

3 tourist visas, 17 countries, 30 different border crossings, and 52 passport stamps. (1)

Three oceans, two continents, one sea, and an isthmus.

Two birthdays, two Thanksgivings, one Christmas, and a presidential election.

One year, 5 months, and 17 days.

20 hours logged in planes, 10 hours in trains, 25 hours in boats, and 775 hours in busses (2).

Thousands of miles, hundreds of friends, nine inches of hair, and countless memories.

A once in a lifetime opportunity.

Overland from Brazil down to the End of the World and back up to the United States. Planned, traveled, realized.

Epic.

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Footnotes:

(1) – For those stuck on the math, I hopped the border into Paraguay from Brazil and back covertly (read illegally), and for Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, you only get one entry and one exit stamp.

(2) – While ridiculously large (equivalent to 32 days), this number is also slightly deceiving. I only included major bus trips, mainly those trips where I found myself sleeping in a different spot at the end of the trip. Thus this value does NOT include any inner city bus travel, a lot of return day trips, no taxi hours, and none of the time I spent sitting waiting in terminals, on highways, or wherever while inbetween busses. So while it is a MASSIVE number, the actual time spent getting from point A to point B would be much, much larger. The 775 hours is really just part of the story. Nonetheless, I think 775 hours is still pretty impressive.