One day to go - in less than 24hrs we will be winging our way to Santiago, Chile, then on to Lima, Peru.  After a night in Lima we are hoping to catch the 24hr bus up to Ecuador, to end up in Cuenca for 2 weeks of intensive Spanish.  The bus looks very comfortable with recliner lazyboy type seats, all meals and even bingo games - you can win another bus ticket :-)

All the gear is laid out on the spare bed.  I'm wavering between thinking it looks like an enormous amount of gear to fit into two packs and thinking it looks like a tiny amount of gear for 8.5 months.  I guess we'll find out . . .