First off, apologies all around for us not having updated the website for nearly three weeks. While our postings are generally a bit sporadic due to our travels, three weeks is just crazy talk. But rest assured that in the coming week or two you’ll be hearing many stories of our travel adventures that have happened since our visit to Machu Picchu (including one involving a local man selling the herbal equivalent to Viagra during a 9 hour bus ride through the Amazon jungle).

Tim and I have so many plans for the website, we get really excited every time we day dream about it. We have probably hundreds of different posts we want to write, many of which we think we’ll add upon our return back to the US. (And hopefully you all will still be interested in reading more stories even though we’ll already be home safe and sound.) We figure that if we continue writing about our travels after we go home then we can keep living our dream a bit longer. Sounds reasonable, right?

Anyway, the majority of our posts right now center on our travel experiences: where we’ve been, what we’ve seen, who we’ve met, etc. This, of course, makes sense since we’re traveling right now. But of course there’s a lot more to this round-the-world travel than just what we’ve seen. There’s the planning before the trip (which as many of you remember was almost a full-time job for us) and the logistics during the trip too. There are the “how to explain to the hotel that you’ve blown out the power for the third time in one week and get out of not paying for the electrician” sort of posts. Or the “two pairs of underwear for this length of trip really is enough, Mom” posts. And, as any traveler already knows, there are the “anything and everything to do with bathrooms and your visits to them” posts.

Speaking of this last topic, let’s take a moment to talk about toilets, shall we? (No worries for those of you with faint hearts: we won’t be talking about what’s in the toilet, just the toilet itself.) You see, Tim and I have been gathering data on South American toilets for five months now and we have a lot to share. But given my close relationship with them (one that will be explored in just a moment but, again, with little detail), I feel some of this information needs to be shared sooner rather than later. Not because I want to complain, of course, but for the sake of all those travelers who come behind (so to speak).

So Tim and I visited Peru for five weeks. And in those five weeks we watched condors soar, surfed down sand dunes, climbed the mountain overlooking the lost city of the Incas, and made some wonderful friends. We also adjusted to altitude, learned to haggle, and were attacked by small children trying to sell us finger puppets. Undoubtedly some of our favorite memories from our trip will fall within our time in Peru.

But on the other side (or should I say “end”) of things, I was sick with stomach problems for two of our five weeks in Peru. (I was: 1 week healthy, 1 week sick, 1 week healthy, 1 week sick, 1 week healthy…I’m nothing if not consistent.) And by my calculations (calculations involving the tallying of used toilet paper rolls, a crayon, and a stuffed hedgehog), I basically spent four days in Peruvian bathrooms. That’s 96 hours on a toilet.

Now, Tim and I have seen some, shall we say, less than desirable toilets in our five or so months of travel. But there is nothing quite like the toilet located at altitude. Altitude, otherwise known as “way too high in the sky and really damn cold” makes toilets feel like giant and unforgiving ice cubes on your very unhappy bottom.

And so I challenge anyone to tell me what could be worse than having to sprint to the bathroom every 5-8 minutes complete with fever and horrible body aches for one week straight (cue the sympathetic violins, please)…only to be greeted by an ice cube. An ice cube, I should mention, that doesn’t thaw no matter how long your unhappy bottom visits it. I am fairly certain the only way to make the situation worse is to put a ridiculous Peruvian hat on your head, a hat that you need to wear at altitude because your ears will fall off otherwise.

(I am, of course, fairly certain this is the only way to make the situation worse because I own a ridiculous Peruvian hat. Two, in fact.)