This yearning for self-discovery abroad came from a childhood, without. In elementary school, girls returned from summer break and told stories of Cancun. Their skin was tanned and their hair braided tight, finished with plastic beads that clacked against each other at recess. I was Mexican American, and somehow… had never been to Mexico??? In college, I watched my friends study abroad and travel the world. One thing plagued me: why did the people with the most seem to find themselves in the same, familiar, comfortable Western European vacations?

I was more interested in using my youth to “rough it” in places people had never heard of or were too remote for them to care. I wanted to use travel to discover our beginnings, where we came from: ruins, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. When I finally saved up enough to get a passport and a meager travel fund, I dedicated my travels to just that. In 2020, my best friend Alexis and I planned a trip to Peru, Bolivia, and Chile for our birthdays. We had traveled all over Mexico and Guatemala together, and this was the big, South American trip we had been dreaming up for some time. But then, the pandemic came and blew our plans out of the water. It also carried us in different directions: me into the uncertain waters of freelance writing, and her, to all-consuming law school. We never rescheduled the trip, and given our ever-conflicting schedules, we probably never would. But in 2022, I was invited to a wedding in Malinalco, Mexico with a big group of friends. Over wine and empanadas with colleagues from Colombia and Chile, I wondered aloud if I should extend the trip and travel solo to Peru and Bolivia– to make it a real “Eat, Pray, Lima” experience. They urged me to book it and worry about the details later. “YOLO!!!” they said. I went home and booked the trip.