I just got back from my trip to South America and I still can’t believe it’s over. Once you start working, you try to use your time abroad even more efficiently and that is why we tried to take it all in, use time wisely and remember all the good times when having to go back to work (which is basically now – a dream).

When we decided to go to South America, the first question that popped to mind was, which countries do we want to see? And how many? I mean, we only had three weeks and I have aleady been to Brazil before, so we wanted to go to countries that neither of us knew. Knowing my friend and I share the same travel state of mind, we wanted to experience as much as possible in a short period of time, without having the feeling that we missed out on getting to know the countries. Our friends called us insane, didn’t understand why we prefered stressful traveling around over relaxation, but I feel like being constantly on the go is just our kind of thing. It calms me down, takes my mind of things at work or at home and therefore is exactly what I needed after my first year of work (Olé).

By the end of the day, we decided that we would start in Buenos Aires, Argentina, make our way up to Bolivia and end the trip in Lima, Peru. My biggest challenge this time was to balance not wanting to plan too much beforehand like you usually do as a backpacker versus having to make a rough estimate of where we would have to be on what day in order to not miss our flight on the last day. I hate pre- scheduled vacations as it doesn’t give you any flexibility to change your mind last minute to stay longer at one place than the other. However, we managed pretty well considering that we only had 20 days to travel through three different countries.

Over the course of the next couple days, I will write more about the different stops in detail and add some of my favorite pictures from the trip. Before that, I would like to just quickly  address one aspect that has been following me around ever since we started planning that trip. If you read about South America on the Internet, talk about it with your parents or friends or other people that’ve been there, safety is a big concern. Word to the wise: don’t let it hold you back from going there. I have been so paranoid the first couple of days knowing that we would be two females traveling by ourselves. My parents were concerned, friends were worried and after I listened to a couple of crime stories that recently happened there, I was really scared (I am the biggest wuss anyways, oh well).

Doing your research on current situations is obviously good and being careful is as well, but let me tell you based on experience – Argentina, Bolivia and Peru are very beautiful countries, I experienced the people to be extremly friendly and nothing ever happened to us. If you are aware of your surroundings, if you pay attention to the people around you, use your common sense and don’t walk around totally drunk in the dark you are good to go. If you are insecure about situations, seek for help or ask other people. I found the hostels that we stayed in to be very helpful as well as they pointed out where to go and not to go. Crime can happen in any big city in the world, don’t hold yourself back just because you think about what might happen once you go outside. As I said, we had the most amazing time and I regret that I listened to the worst case scenario stories rather than to listen to the many, many incredibly positive stories instead. Thank god, I was feeling much better once I settled in, saw how things were done around there and felt very comfortable in moving around freely.

Having said that, I hope that I can inspire you to book a trip to South America someday as well as it really has been a great time and I am definitely planning on coming back soon.