Our 20th Anniversary

We landed in Montevideo, Uruguay on our 20th Anniversary. I am smiling from ear to ear.

When I was 19 years old I backpacked across Australia and New Zealand for 5 months. I clearly remember watching the backpacking families staying in the youth hostles. They stuck out. They were cool. They got along well. They laughed a lot. I remember watching these occasional random families and everytime I would tell myself, "if I have a family one day, I am going to do that".

Colby read me a quote yesterday, "tourists do not know where they have been, travellers do not know where they are going". We are the latter; seven countries, 4.5 months. We have been talking about this for years and we are ready for another adventure.

We went for a 10 kilometer hike yesterday. Some along the ocean shore and then inland to a national botanical park. It started out a beautiful day but as soon as we began our hike the clouds rolled in and it started to rain. My first thought was that we would go back to our room and Greg and I could crack open our bottle of Uruguay Tannat wine but that was not going to happen since everyone else in my family slowed down just enough to put on their rain coats saying, "let's go!"

Walking behind my family I watched my girls have playful running competitions as Greg and Levi were holding hands and talking about sea shells. I thought, "if I had a crystal ball 20 years ago and saw that my family would be 3 happy healthy kids and we would be backpacking across South America, I would have known that I would have it all."

Today we are in a small fishing village along the Atlantic Ocean coast. A surfer town full of shanty shacks and stray dogs. We are having a heck of a time with the language. Missed our bus out of town today since our hostel manager told us that the bus comes 20 minutes 'after' the schedule indicates but then realized that he got his 'before' and 'after' mixed up. Oh well.....   another day in Punta del Diablo isn't so bad.

Lana