I often look at the pictures we take and think, “Wow! We really are having the adventure of our dreams!" For us, there is no greater lifestyle than traveling around the world on a motorcycle, and sometimes we stand next to our bike with a jaw-dropping vista in the background on some crazy winding dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and I just couldn't be prouder of how far we've come.

Unfortunately, this is not one of those moments.

Yesterday Tim and I found ourselves hobbling around the Peruvian town of Huaraz, me on crutches, him looking pale and sickly with four cotton-ball bandages on his arms where the nurses stuck him with needles and IV's, and I couldn't help but think that whatever superpowers we may have once thought we had, they're certainly gone now.

About two weeks ago, things were pretty much perfect for us. We were making our way south from the remote reaches of northern Peru, stopping by every grouping of ruins we could (there are tons in this region) and exploring the towns and gorgeous views of the countryside along the way. 

We even got our bike decked out to look the part in a local sheep skin from a little woman who desperately wanted us to take one of her puppies as well. I told her we were traveling on a motorcycle and could not bring a puppy with us, but she insisted that they were small enough to fit in our backpacks. Then I explained that we would need to cross borders, and bringing animals was not allowed without the proper paperwork. She said she had a box we could hide the puppies in, and the guards would never know. After a long debate about this, we were able to purchase just the sheepskin and thankfully were not forced to leave with a puppy.

Our adventures in Peru were truly taking us to fantastic places. The roads in this country are cliffside, scary, and breathtaking, and are famous for zig-zagging with countless switchbacks. Sometimes you can spend an hour simply going down a narrow valley and then up the other side. But we were loving every second of it.

And then our luck literally took a turn for the worse. We were making a turn on a dirt road with a concrete patch that was used for water drainage when the back tire slipped out from under us. Normally our falls are slow and you can sense yourself tilting farther and farther over. But this one was quick and sudden, out of nowhere. We skid for a good 10-15 feet along the concrete, and all was good, except that the ground had somehow pushed my right toe so that my foot ended up backwards and under the pannier.

I had to jump off to flip myself in the direction of my foot since I couldn't get it out right away, and from the pain and the angle that my leg had been forced in, I knew something was definitely wrong. 

Our plan had been to camp that night since it was a long way to the next town. So despite my injury, that's what we did. Needless to say, I wasn't much help at putting up the tent, but Tim was quite the gentleman, doing everything for me, and even brought some cold river water for me to soak my foot in, which helped a lot with the swelling.

That night I was in a lot of pain, and I probably wouldn't have gotten any sleep if it wasn't for taking a few pain pills which we always carry with us. But I had no idea whether I broke my foot or not, and knew that we needed to get to a hospital with an x-ray machine as soon as possible to find out.

So the next day we headed to the nearest town of Caraz, passing through gorgeous Cañon del Pato on the way. Once in Caraz, I went straight to the hospital and got an x-ray. The doctor told me there was a broken bone, unfortunately, she did not seem confident in her assessment. To add to the confusion, she kept trying to call the doctor who makes casts and he wouldn't answer, and nobody knew if he was on vacation or when he would ever come back to work.

They made a temporary cast for me, and I had suspicions that they made it wrong, so Tim and I made an executive decision that night to go to a different hospital in the next town: Huaraz.

Not even two hours away, and backdropped by white-capped mountains, Huaraz's hospital seemed to be much better equipped than the one in Caraz. And after a new set of x-rays, the doctor in Huaraz confirmed that I did not have a broken bone, and it was just a pulled muscle. Even so, I would need to stay off my foot for at least 10 days. That was a lot better than a month or two in a cast, so I was very thankful for this second opinion, and after we found a comfortable hotel just down the street from the hospital, it seemed that everything was going to be alright.

We've been here in Huaraz for more than a week now, and I'm happy to say that my foot is on the mend. In fact, we'd planned on leaving yesterday to go check out the gorgeous mountains around here, but then Tim got sick two nights ago.

This was the fourth fever he's had this year, and it was a bad one. Without a wink of sleep, he spent the night mumbling incoherently and complaining of pain wracking his head, stomach, and back. So yesterday we spent the morning at the hospital conveniently down the street from us, and after many tests, we learned that it's not malaria (thank goodness!) but that he could have Typhoid Fever.

Typhoid Fever is actually what happens when you get salmonella. And although it can be quite miserable and severe if untreated, and it can even lead to death, it's also easily treated with a round of antibiotics.

So here we are still, and apparently Huaraz, Peru is our new home. We are luckily very comfortable and have all the amenities we could ever want, but we're definitely not feeling as bad-ass as usual, and our adventuring has been put on hold.

I'm not sure how much longer we'll stay here, surely until we are both fully recovered, but once we feel well-enough, we'll be headed into the mountains where we'll try to gain some of our superpowers back.

Nothing has come easy for us in Peru. From underdeveloped road conditions, to people just shrugging their shoulders when telling us that the road is closed, and then still others simply making things up when we ask for directions because they'd rather say something than nothing, this place has definitely tested our patience.

But alongside Peru's challenges come great rewards, and we firmly believe that despite the obstacles, this country and its incredible people are worth it. And the perfect example of that has been the sites and cultures we've seen here in the north, or as I like to call it, the Land of the Dead, for reasons which I will explain later. 

As many of you know, we were on the road to Peru two weeks ago when our monoshock broke and we were forced to haul the bike back to Cuenca, Ecuador, to get it fixed. What we didn't realize at the time was that the particular stretch of road between Cuenca, Ecuador and Jaén, Peru is cursed.

If you hear the name Colombia and you think “Narcos" or “cocaine", then I have to let you in on a little secret: throw those preconceptions out the window and come to Colombia where you will have the time of your life, but don't tell anyone else. Let them have their suspicions about this gem of a country, because if everyone knew how great it was, then the whole world would descend upon Colombia and never leave.

If you can't tell yet, Colombia is our absolute favorite country that we have visited so far (we are currently in Ecuador, so we haven't gotten much farther). This is not to say that all the other countries we have been to are awful. To the contrary, we've loved our time in every place, and each one is unique and enjoyable in its own way. At the moment of writing this, we have driven from the US through every country in Central America and into South America, and it has been amazing. But Tim and I both agree that there was something particularly magical about Colombia.

One of the greatest things about Colombia is a bit ironic. Because of its turbulent recent past, Colombia has not had the onslaught of tourism and modernization that other countries have. In fact, most tourists avoided Colombia for a very long time, and it wasn't until recently, as in the past ten years, that it really started to open up.

The worst has happened. Well, getting into an accident and injuring ourselves or rendering the bike permanently useless would be the worst. So then I guess I should say the second to worst has happened: our rear shock has broken and now we are stuck in Ecuador without a motorcycle until it can be fixed.

But let me start at the beginning.

After our brief venture into the Amazon, we took a route through southern Ecuador to get to Peru, a route that would pass through some recommended towns. And the first of which was Baños.

After staying with our friends Court and Sylvain at Ecuador Freedom Bike Rental to get our bike fixed (now it has new fork seals / bushings and is as good as new), we wanted to take a quick detour into the Amazon before leaving Ecuador and going to Peru.

The thing about the Amazon rainforest is that rivers have always been its main artery for transportation, and they are a much better way to get around than roads which can destroy the forest itself. This makes getting to the Amazon on a motorcycle a bit of a challenge, but there is a town in Ecuador that is the last outpost for land-bound vehicles and the beginning of the true Amazon, a place called El Coca. Since we knew we wanted to go there, we plugged El Coca into our GPS, and headed out of Quito.

Tim and I often find ourselves alone on the road with only each other to talk to, but for the past two weeks we have had the pleasure of traveling with fellow motorcyclists. After leaving Quito, Ecuador, we have now spent half a month coming full circle, going in a great loop around the coast and mountains of Ecuador. And we were able to experience it all while being in the company of other travelers, which is a real treat for us.

We left the Horizon's Unlimited Event in tow of two other motorcycle couples, all of them coincidentally from Melbourne, Australia, and also riding two-up on their bikes like us. It was somehow fateful and perfect that we had all met up at in the same country and at the same time.

We left Ibarra, Ecuador and headed toward the country's capital of Quito, knowing that we would have a few days to explore the city before our Horizon's Unlimited meeting was to take place. This HU event would be a group of fellow motorcycle travelers meeting up just outside of Quito for three days, and we had been preparing two speeches to give at the conference (we were extremely excited). What we didn't know was that Tim was harboring some nasty tropical disease within him, and this sickness was going to change everything.

This blog post is something new that we're trying out as we start combining our updates with shorter posts every week or so. We will also be doing our much larger country profile blogs with videos, and those will be named after the country without a date in the title. So I hope you enjoy the first of our mini-blog/updates.

Yesterday we crossed from Colombia into Ecuador. It was hard saying goodbye to Colombia, a country that we have grown to love over the past two and a half months. The colorful villages, the green mountains, the welcoming smiles, the typical platter of rice, fried plantains, and meat that we've come to enjoy called bandeja, oh and the free motorcycle lane to skip right through tolls... we will certainly miss Colombia.

But we must head on, especially since we will be presenting at the Horizon's Unlimited event in Quito, Ecuador on July 20-22, which we are very excited for. 

Since Panama was our last stop in Central America before heading into South America, and because Tim and I were so excited for the vast stretches of pure nature that South America had to offer, we may have not experienced Panama for what it’s worth. We rode through pretty quickly on the Pan-American highway and spent much of our time doing customs paperwork to get the bike into Colombia. In many ways, we were mentally checked out of Central America and already thinking about what was to come, and so for those reasons we did not take our time to appreciate Panama as we could have.