Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil
Our Paulista Studio

When our host for the month of June let us know days before our arrival that he was cancelling our reservation, a mad dash to find replacement lodging ensued. Were it not for World Cup tickets in Natal and flights booked to depart from Recife (two cities in the northeastern part of the country), we … Read more

Second Apartment View

Our house for the month of May was perched amid lush greenery one street from the base of Morro Dois Irmãos between Leblon and Vidigal (more on the location itself in our Everyday Essentials post). It was a fairly large house split into a number of apartments, at least 7 that we know of, and … Read more

Our Location

This is a series detailing some of what appear at first to be more mundane details of a place, but will hopefully be illuminating as insights into the grind behind the “glamour.”  Location and Safety Rio de Janeiro is a big place with a lot of variation in neighborhoods. Our rental this month, which we … Read more

The Breakdown: An “Alternate” Plan

May 8th, 2014 | Posted by Ian in Brazil | Dogs | Lodging | Speedbumps | The Places We've Been - (Comments Off)
Eddie and the CR-V

Welp, it finally happened for the first time. The CR-Van broke down. We hopped in the car to leave São Paulo on a sunny Saturday morning, excited to hit the sexy beaches of Rio de Janeiro by that afternoon. After a few loopty-loops and a few curses lobbed at the GPS for her poor performance, … Read more

Living Room and Bedroom Door from Kitchen

Our home in São Paulo was a compact 1-bedroom apartment on a double-digit floor of a big bland downtown building with a fantastic view, many built-in conveniences, and a super comfortable bed. From the outside, things felt a bit chaotic. The building sits at the intersection of two main-ish streets with lots of foot traffic and … Read more

Colonia Flat

April 15th, 2014 | Posted by Brianna in Lodging | The Places We've Been | Uruguay - (7 Comments)
Living Room

As we’ve mentioned in a few previous posts, we had the pleasure of meeting our host for our stay in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay prior to our arrival while we were still in Buenos Aires. Martín is a location independent computer guy like Ian who splits his time between the Argentine city and his quiet retreat … Read more

Summer Storm in Argentina

We departed our beloved Buenos Aires early on a Friday morning. 2,000 miles stretched before us and we planned to tackle the long journey south, including two international borders, over the course of four days. For us, this actually meant relatively leisurely drives of 10-12 hours per day, but for many overlanders, that is considered … Read more

Home in San Telmo

January 30th, 2014 | Posted by Brianna in Argentina | Lodging | The Places We've Been - (7 Comments)
Beautifully Tiled Bathroom

Having visitors tends to mean, among other things of course, that we have an excuse to look for lodging far nicer than we would if it were just the two of us. It’s not that any of our guests have been picky or demanding, but rather that being a group of people in a home … Read more

In La Paz

December 26th, 2013 | Posted by Brianna in Bolivia | Celebrations | Food | Lodging | Oh | The Places We've Been - (7 Comments)
Photo Shoot

In La Paz… …residents live in the world’s highest de facto capital. At approximately 12,000 feet (the city sits in a bowl, so true altitudes range greatly from 10,500 to 13,500 feet), La Paz is Bolivia’s cultural or people’s capital while Sucre is the legal capital. The city itself has a population of 877,000, but … Read more

Machu Picchu

Long before Ian and I met, we both, separately, dreamed of one day visiting Machu Picchu. For two people with inexhaustible collections of places we’d like to go, things we’d like to see, and activities we’d like to do, this magical spot in the Peruvian Andes for some reason stuck out. I’m not even sure … Read more