In the beginning....

Where to start... So I guess the idea for this whole crazy trip started around February of 2006 when Amy was accepted into a PhD program at UCSF. Well seeing how she had been working there for over two years already, and would be staying there for another 6, she felt that she needed a long break before returning to school. We had been toying with the idea of taking a long vacation, when I proposed to Amy and she accepted (sucker). From there the trip turned it into a honeymoon. Amy differed her acceptance for a year, and I quit my job. We looked at many different places, and decided that since we both knew a little Spanish, and the cost of living was low enough for us to travel for nearly a year on the money we had saved, to spend our time abroad in Central and South America. First we planned to go to Costa Rica to a small town called Orosi where there was a VERY affordable Spanish school called Montana Linda. After a couple months in Central America we would fly to Argentina, stay there for a few months, then travel to Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador....etc, returning home in May of 2008. So on June 30th, 2007, Amy and I tied the knot, and received many kind gifts from our friends and family to help us make the trip possible. We bought tickets to Costa Rica, leaving on the 12th of September (we wouldn't want to tempt fate) so we spent the next two and a half months preparing for our trip, and did a bunch of traveling. We drove to Washington and spent a few weeks in British Columbia boating, backpacking, and rock climbing. Then we came back to California and did more climbing and an AMAZING backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevadas. Just before we left we got to enjoy the wedding of two of our good friends. So on September 11th, we packed our bags and at midnight we boarded the plane for Costa Rica.