Chronicles of Suz

Our Remote Year group spent the third month of this year together living, working and playing in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima, Peru. Collectively we were so ready for a new country after living in Argentina for two months. Even though I claimed Córdoba wasn't so bad after all , by the end of February we were so over it, group morale was low, and a gorgeous coastal city was just what the doctor ordered. In Miraflores each sunset is better than the next Week 1 in Lima I hit the ground running, or more accurately, I hit the air flying. After a mere 36 hours of attempting to acclimate to my 3rd new home of 2018, I was back at the airport headed off to Cusco. I already waxed poetic on my love of Cusco , but in summary, it was an effing awesome trip, maybe one of my favorite trips ever (same goes for Patagonia, ahhh so many wonderful places)! The moment I got back to Lima (seemingly, though in reality it was two days later), we hopped on a 4.5 hour bus headed south to

All the activities. All the altitude. All the modes of transportation. All the coca. All the corn. Cusco was so much of so many things. Does that even make sense?! That's how I felt the entire time I was in and around Cusco, and I LOVED IT ALL. We arrived in Cusco, Peru- altitude of 11,150 feet (3,399 meters for the non-Americans) aka altitude-sickness-land, took most of the first day attempting to adjust to said altitude while exploring the city, then spent a day traveling to and from Machu Picchu, then the next day climbed a cliff to sleep in a pod on the side of said cliff, then the next day zip-lined down from said cliff pod to be driven directly to the Cusco airport to return to our brand-spanking-new home in Lima that we had only just arrived to 36 hours prior to departing for our Cusco adventure. Sorry for the way-too-long run-on sentence paragraph thing there, a clear sign that this trip was another one of those #ThisIsWhyIRemoteYear trips - a concept described

On our first night in Patagonia, we walked from our hostel down to Argentino Lake, just in time to witness a stunning 9pm sunset. I was traveling with two fellow remotes, and we took a collective deep breath. It was Friday night, and the glaciers and mountains awaited us. Amy, usually the quietest of the three of us, announced "This is why I signed up for Remote Year." Sunrise over Argentino Lake on my last day in Patagonia (also down the street from where we watched the sunset on the first night) Throughout the rest of the trip, that sentiment popped back into my head many times: when I stomped around on a glacier made up of shades of blue I never knew existed... when we befriended a 20-year-old girl from Alabama in our hostel and ended up helping her ring in her 21st birthday over dinner that night... when we took a bus out to a tiny town populated by only 350 people year round to hike through some of the most gorgeous terrain I have ever seen... when I woke up for a