Peru & Colombia

I flew into Cusco from Miami via Lima and immediately felt the altitude. You don't really believe 11,000 feet will hit you until you're carrying luggage up stairs and your Apple Watch sends you a low heart rate alert at 3am.

The Sacred Valley was like stepping into a postcard — Pisac, Sacsayhuamán, Ollantaytambo, the Maras Salt Mines, Aguas Calientes. Peru goes all out for Christmas. Entire towns were blinking with lights, and the main squares had elaborate nativity scenes surrounded by vendors who would alternate between offering you dinner and offering you cocaine.

One evening after dinner, a gang fight broke out in the main square right as we were walking through. I grabbed the back of my friend's jacket and pushed him around the corner into a side street before it escalated. The next morning we were back in the same square eating breakfast like nothing happened.

The train to Machu Picchu was worth every penny. I did Circuit 2 — the classic route — at sunrise, and it was everything you'd hope it would be. Afterward, I sat in a coffee shop at the base of Machu Picchu using AI to edit my photos so that both my nipples weren't visible in each frame. A very 2024 thing to do at an ancient Incan citadel.

Then north — Cusco to Bogotá to Cartagena. I'd never been anywhere that goes as hard for Christmas as Cartagena. Every street, every building, every plaza was covered in lights. Walking through the old walled city at night felt like being inside a Christmas card. Hit my 50-country milestone here.

The vendors in Peru kept offering cocaine. In Cartagena, the pitch shifted to 'chicas.' The cultural differences in illegal offerings were oddly consistent — always preceded by a polite attempt to sell you a taxi or a restaurant.

For the first time in probably twenty years, I was walking around an island with no shirt on and not feeling awkward about it. And then a bartender made me do a TikTok with her. There were no rules — at one point we were drinking at a bar and about to go do our second snorkel of the day.

From Cartagena I flew to Medellín and then Bogotá before heading home. Colombia was warm, chaotic, beautiful, and completely unlike anywhere else I'd been in South America. Christmas Day, 2024 — I suffered the cruel fate of tropical warmth and an endless supply of fresh Mai Tais.