Author Archives: Melissa Ruttanai

Melissa Ruttanai finds that not everything costs money in Montevideo, Uruguay….

Bikes and Wine in Mendoza, Argentina

In our first five months in South America, Neil and I were able to visit four of the most famous shopping meccas of Ecuador and Peru.

Unlike hostals, hotels, and hospedajes, a homestay is often a rented room in a private home.

In Baños, the internet isn’t a main mode of communication. The best maps are hand drawn and photocopied with scrawling notes. Business transactions can be low tech. People buy, sell, and rent through flyers in windows.

Along the way he stopped to point out tracks left by a jaguar, and later a tapir. The canopy bristled with screeching monkeys and the almost Jurassic calls of countless bird species.

I set off into the jungle with my guide Achiles on his narrow riverboat. We were heading deep into the Amazon for five days to visit Achiles’ friend Don Luis in the village of Nueva Utuquinia, roughly halfway between Pucallpa and the Brazilian border.