We’ve spent the last few months in Ecuador and I wish I’d shared more of it with you. We started out with a few weeks in the Galápagos, where we got alarmingly close to some spectacular wildlife (dolphins, giant turtles, sea lions, enormous rays, even a hammerhead shark) and geeked out on Charles Darwin. We then took a tour of the mainland, including kayaking in the lake-filled crater of a stunning volcano, before landing in the small Andean town of Cuenca.
When I began fantasizing about extended travel, the first things that came to mind weren’t adventurous hikes or novel cultural experiences. What I dreamt of above all, above even food, was time. I wanted the luxury of taking it for granted. We tried to make this a guiding principle throughout our trip by doing things like moving slowly and taking breaks. But my dream was most fully realized during this last leg of our trip. We stopped traveling entirely and got an apartment in Cuenca. In part this was to start applying to jobs and generally plan our transition back to the US (before you ask – we don’t know what we’ll be doing or where we’ll be living yet), but it was also to work on some personal projects and try spending our time in ways that were both purposeful and internally motivated.
I never imagined that the biggest chunk of our trip would be in Ecuador of all places, but the pace and charm of Cuenca has matched so beautifully with the peaceful and restoring time I’d first dreamt of. Ecuador is such an underrated country, unjustly overshadowed by its flashier Peruvian neighbor. It really deserves its own blog post, but the chances of that happening are slim. Maybe ask us about it sometime. Instead, I’d like to give you some stats about our entire trip and share some favorites (because that’s the first thing that everyone asks!).
In 367 days…
Superlatives
Best food: Tie between Pakistan & Thailand
Pakistan just objectively has the best tasting food on the planet, but Thailand has the best food culture and variety.
Favorite activity
Maheen: Snorkeling in the Thai islands
Jack: Camping in the White Desert in Egypt, which is famous for its bizarre chalk rock formations. It’s the most remote place I’ve ever been. We spent a night there with two bedouin guides and slept in the open under the stars. It was so dark that we could see meteors every minute and a perfect milky way band.
Friendliest people: Ecuador
Runner up: Mexico
Most dangerous experience
We were in the small, rural town of Kep in Cambodia and were walking home from dinner in the dark because we couldn’t find a cab. The walk itself wasn’t bad, but it was patrolled by dozens of wild territorial dogs who screeched and foamed at us every time we tried to pass. We seriously thought we may get attacked and even carried fistfuls of rocks in case things got dire, but mostly had no choice but to hold our breath and march forward.
I just want to underscore here that, while that night was scary, we were lucky to never encounter a (human) person who made us feel unsafe and generally felt very safe throughout the trip.
Most beautiful cities: Ukraine
Best sauce: Peru
This yellow sauce is served with almost everything and is made from aji amarillo, which has been called the most important ingredient in Peruvian cuisine. It’s spicy and has a complex flavor we had never encountered.
Where we made the most friends: Cambodia
Most interesting cultural experience
Maheen: Eating a traditional homemade meal in the one-room family home of a mountaineer-cook in Hunza (Northern Pakistan).
Jack: Seeing the floating village of Kampong Khleang in Cambodia
Maheen’s runner up: Cooking lunch in the bamboo home of a hill tribe family in Chiang Rai, Thailand.
Jack’s runner up: Spending four nights on Elephantine island – a Nubian village in the Nile. It was only accessible by boat and the people there were so welcoming.
Coolest city: Istanbul, Turkey
Worst Experience
Jack: Waking up with a big cockroach under my arm in Mexico. In that same week, I got the most painful sunburn of my life and a random dog took a big bite out of my arm.
Place I’d be most down to live
Maheen: Mexico City
Jack: The Kadıköy neighborhood of Istanbul
Best historical sites: Egypt
Most superlative: Dubai
While there, we saw the world records for the tallest building, largest mall, biggest fountain show, largest ferris wheel, largest picture frame, twistiest tower, largest suspended aquarium screen, and longest driverless metro.
Least favorite cities: Cancún, Mexico & Kep, Cambodia
Best McDonald’s: Thailand
We sampled Micky D’s in every country and Thailand was the clear winner, even compared with the U.S.
Biggest blunder
We missed our train from Cairo to Aswan (Egyptians have an interesting tendency to point you in an arbitrary direction when they don’t know the place you’re asking about, in addition to using the same name for multiple places). This meant an hour in the “tourist police” office, bribing an officer to change our ticket, and getting in at 3:30am. Struggling to find a cab we trusted not to scam us once we arrived, we set out on foot (nervously rebuffing the late-night brand of aggressive hawkers and taxi drivers Aswan is known for) to find the small dock where we were only about 60% sure our non-English-speaking contact would be waiting to row us to the dark, underdeveloped island we were staying on.
Best chips: Tie between Thailand and Egypt
Jack loves bizarre artificial chip flavors and tried every kind he could find.
Things we were most homesick for
Maheen: Bagels; access to a kitchen; couches; restaurants with websites; being able to receive identity-verifying text message codes; good chocolate
Jack: Cereal; free and available drinking water
One superlative I will not be listing is my favorite country. They were each different and amazing in their own way and I don’t regret choosing any of them (trust me, I’d tell you if I did). I have very few regrets about this trip in general, and going into it I wasn’t sure that was going to be true. We were nervous that places would be dead because of COVID and we wouldn’t get the “real” experience. We were worried about getting hurt, robbed, bored, overwhelmed, lost. I was terrified of living off cold showers. We weren’t sure we would make it past 6 months. And don’t get me wrong, we certainly had our setbacks, but I think we largely grew from them or at least learned to grow past them. I feel so fortunate that we were in a position to consider a trip like this and proud for making it happen. It was everything we’d hoped it would be.
As a final note, I just want you to know how much this blog has meant to me. It has inspired me to reflect so much more deeply on our experiences than I would have otherwise. Writing has never come easily to me, and this blog helped me gain a comfort and even fondness for it that I hadn’t considered possible. Thank you so much to those of you who commented on a post or said something to me about it or just followed along silently – you motivated me to keep it up much longer than I ever thought I would.
I am still glad to respond to any comments or questions people post, and haven’t ruled out writing a little more periodically, but this is officially the end of the blog for now. Thanks for coming along for the ride <3
You can find pictures from our time in Ecuador in the Photos tab, but we’ve selected some of our favorites below.
