Roaming South America

UNESCO Heritage Sites - Part 3

June 16, 2026

My previous 2 blogs talked about some of the towns (pueblos) east of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. After going out to Roboré and Santiago de Chiquitos, I returned to the town of San José de Chiquitos. San José is the turn-off point to do the northern circuit of the Jesuit Missions. The first stop is San Rafael. From there, you visit San Ignacio, Concepción, San Javier, and San Julián. Those are the towns with the UNESCO Jesuit Missions churches that survived the centuries and were restored in the 1980s and 1990s. The first blog of this series also spoke about the Jesuits and their missions, and the second blog also spoke about the Mennonites who live in this part of Bolivia.

UNESCO Heritage Sites - Part 2 - And the Mennonites

June 13, 2026

My previous blog was about some of the towns (pueblos) east of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. After going out to Roboré and Santiago de Chiquitos, I returned to the town of San José de Chiquitos. San José is the turn-off point to do the northern circuit of the Jesuit Missions. The first stop is San Rafael.

From the heat of the Amazon to the cold of the Andes

June 9, 2026

First, this blog is out of sequence. I wrote it and then forgot to add it to the schedule. So, here it is, a couple of months late.

Back on March 4, I arrived in Huancayo after spending about a month in Perú's Amazon region. It was warm, humid, and comfortable - T-shirt weather. Then I headed into the mountains. Since then, it’s been more than a month of higher elevations, colder air, and buildings with no heat. I don’t like the cold. Not just the outside cold, but the inside cold. The kind where you wake up and hesitate to leave the blankets because the room feels like a refrigerator.

The Inca Empire is Gone, but the Inca People are here to stay

May 6, 2026

One question I've been curious about while traveling through the Andes is this: Did the Spanish wipe out the Incas? The answer is: No. The empire fell, the rulers were executed, and the cities were taken over. You would think it was the end of their civilization. But the reality is very different. The Spanish destroyed the Inca ruling structure, not the Inca people. Their descendants are still here, all across the Andes.

Finding the Quiet: Why My Shortlist for a New Home Ignores the Coast

March 5, 2026

What is it about coastal towns that makes them pretty much always "messier"? I'm talking specifically about these countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, and Uruguay. The vast majority of interior towns are almost always cleaner, friendlier, prettier, etc.

I'm not imagining it. This pattern shows up everywhere I've been, and that includes 7 countries and over 300 towns/cities (in South America), and it’s not a cultural coincidence. It’s geography, economics, and human behavior piling up in the same places.

Here’s the straight, unsentimental anatomy of why coastal towns skew messier, while interior towns often feel cleaner, calmer, and more human. The comparisons below are to be taken with a very general understanding.