Days away from home: 80
Airplane rides: 12
Boat rides: 4
Bus rides: 3
Taxis, vans, shuttles: Too many to count
Lost luggage: 0
Lost personal items: One baseball cap left behind in a hotel room
Items stolen: Only our shot records, supposedly required by the cruise ship line to pass northward through the Panama Canal. After Melanie and Bethanie went through heroic gyrations to get new copies e-mailed to us, it turned out that they didn’t even ask for them when we embarked in Valparaiso, Chile. (I’m sure the thief thought he’d do better when he unzipped the back of my backpack in Buenos Aires, and grabbed a promising-looking small manila envelope.)
Cruise ship ports: Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Aruba, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile
Countries visited: Peru, Argentina, Chile
Favorite country: Chile
Best meal: Anita-Chilean Sea Bass; Vinnie-Liverwurst and cheese sandwich on baguette in Buenos Aires
Foods tried for the first time: Kid goat, duck confit, guinea pig, dulce de leche, empanadas, surubia
Best beer: Beagle Pale Ale, Ushuaia, Argentina
Best wine: Malbec, Salta, Argentina
Most expensive meal: about $150 for three people in the top-rated steakhouse in Buenos Aires
Photos taken: 1185
Sunburns: 2
Most startling sight: Roiling brown and yellow clouds of pollution completely obscuring the ground while flying over southern Santiago, Chile
Other injuries: Anita stressed toe from downhill hiking in Patagonia; Vinnie stressed back muscles helping to load firewood at refugio in upper Cochamo Valley, Chile
Nights in facilities without electricity: 8
Nights in facilities without heat: 6
Nights in sleeping bags: 3
Nights on board ships: 31
Nights on a bus: 1 (Nasca to Arequipa)
Nights on an airplane: 1 (Lima to Buenos Aires)
Miles trekked: 48
Miles kayaked: 12 (in a fjord against the tide)
Miles trekked on horseback: 23
Town we’d most like to move to in South America: Puerto Varas, Chile
