The international travel bug to go to far away places with my kids, really started here....

The Planning

For me the planning is one of the best parts. All the possibilites available to me! The pictures on Pinterest, Google's surplus of places to visit. The blogs by other passionate travelers! There's so much good advice out there and so many options. AirBnB rocks it with places to stay, all with affordable prices. My son is an animal lover, he always has been, so my mother and I knew that an wild life destination was a must...hence the Galapagos Islands! My mother is a native Spanish speaker, so this wasn't an intimidating option. Mausi (my mom) normally takes her grandchildren all summer long. Having sisters who home school, this normally meant 8-12 weeks. My kids attend public school (charter technically), so my time was more limiting. I had six weeks to play with. I planned three weeks in the Galapagos Islands, that left me with three weeks to send them someplace else. Oh the fun!

Deciding what's next

I looked into the Amazon River, but my research showed that it's often a disappointment with so much damage done to nature. I didn't want my son to see this, distruction?! So I continued, Ecuador is a beautiful country, I looked into Cuenca, and Quito. I decided on Quito because it was dignificantly less travel. I planned a week, including Spanish school studies in Quito. But wait, you want to know how I went from Quito to Machu Picchu, they aren't even in the same country! Ok, okay, well I researched the best places to visit in South America and Machu Picchu continued to come up, over and over again. It not only continues to show up, but it's also voted one of the best places to visit in the world (The Galapagos Islands too, are voted one of the best places to visit in the world).