In the 15th century, it was the largest empire in the world, and it still captures the hearts and minds of people today. Though the Inca Empire didn't last long, it made its mark on South America by reshaping the landscape and creating structures that are still marveled at by people from around the globe.

Getting up-close and personal to Peru's Incan past has been a dream of mine since I was a child. And now that Tim and I finally found ourselves in Cusco, the old Incan capital, I could just feel the excitement mounting inside me. I wanted to see and experience it all.

And so we made a plan.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there who celebrate it! Even though it's another year where we're unable to eat turkey with family, at least we are in the beautiful and historic city of Cusco, the old capital of the Incas.

Ecuador is one of the smaller countries of South America, but even so, a whole lot of biodiversity and culture is packed into its borders. You can pretty much come to Ecuador and fulfill your South American dream, no matter what it is: from meeting Andean peoples in ponchos and bowler hats, to swimming with pink dolphins of the Amazonian rivers, to exploring Colonial Spanish cities perfectly painted and preserved, and you can even see whales, dolphins, or the Blue-Footed Boobies of Ecuador's coast made famous by the Galapagos. In Ecuador, there's a little bit of something for everyone here.

When it comes to Peru, the Inca steal the show. Machu Picchu, Cusco, and the Inca Trail are all things that usually come to mind when thinking of Peru. I certainly never pictured glacier-capped mountains and strikingly-blue alpine lakes tucked amidst them. But I do now.

Only the local Peruvians who have been farming these high-altitude slopes for centuries, overlanders like ourselves, and the most adventurous of travelers ever delve into this region. It's called the Cordillera Blanca (meaning white mountain range), and has some of the highest mountain passes in the world.

I now believe that anyone who comes to Peru just to go to Cusco and Machu Picchu is only seeing the face of Peru, the one in all the postcards and brochures. But they will be missing out on the heart of Peru, the one where it's only you and the llamas standing between stone ruins of long lost civilizations, and where red-cheeked babies peek out from the colorful swaddles on local women's backs. It's where white-washed peaks blend into the clouds and turquoise lakes dot the landscape.

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.

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.